Chalmers Johnson, the authoritative academic turned scathing author, has recently reminded us that "from the founding of the republic to the moment of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address in 1961, some of our leaders have warned us that the greatest threat to our republican structure of government is war, including its associated maladies of standing armies, a military-industrial complex and all the vested interests that develop around a massive military establishment."
While truer words are hard to find, presidential candidate John McCain has proven over his many years in public office, as well as throughout this campaign, that he fervently believes the antithesis of professor Johnson's wise pronouncement. He evidently believes that war is the pillar of republican governance and the most vital protectorate of a free people.
A more dangerous prospective conviction for the next sitting president to hold is unlikely to be found in these two campaigns, the culmination of which is now just days away. It seems McCain never met a war he didn't consider absolutely necessary for all Americans to hail.
This frightening martial proclivity has led journalist Matt Welch to conclude that McCain "would be the most explicitly interventionist president since Teddy Roosevelt" and that "he certainly makes George Bush look gun-shy by comparison."
Back in Dec. 1990 McCain's impassioned call to arms sounded strikingly similar to his current warring rhetoric when he said "the peace and security of the world for future generations [demand] that the world community act decisively to end the Gulf Crisis now."
"In Jan. 1994," Matt Welch reports, "he described North Korea's nuclear weapons program as 'the most dangerous and immediate expression' of 'the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today,' and warned that 'there can be no serious doubt that our vital national interests are imperiled.'"
"America's most important values," McCain said in 1999, "are under vicious assault by the Milosevic regime" and that "an immediate and manifold increase in the violence against Serbia proper and Serbian forces in Kosovo" was required as well as infantry preparations for a possible ground war.
This over-eager hawkish oratory was again exemplified with the recent Russian intervention into Georgia. McCain made sweeping claims about Russia's imperial ambitions and the potential return of the Cold War, saying at a rally that "we are all Georgians now." He is equally antagonistic towards Iran; another conflict America simply must avoid and understand as unnecessary.
Despite a majority of American citizens being firmly against this war on nearly every level, and despite the falsification and near-proven fabrication of every rationale for going in the first place, McCain stubbornly insists that these realities be forgiven or even ignored.
He demands that our full occupation of the country remain constant until we've finished the job, while of course being deviously vague as to what that means (as well as ignoring the requisite legal or moral justification for it), thus concocting a recipe for perpetual war - a dream for him if there ever was one.
A dangerous and excessive compulsion to intervene militarily, in any country from Georgia to Iraq to Darfur, has been the hallmark of McCain's career and would mean disaster for our national security, our civil liberties, our Constitution and so much more.
It would mean yet another administration in full support of U.S. unilateral imperium, with total disregard for the noninterventionist principle of the founding of this country.
War typically implicates much more than increased military activity abroad. War, as Randolph Borne said, is the health of the state and at no other time are regular citizens more vulnerable to the abuse of governmental power and scope than when at war.
Warnings from McCain supporters that Barack Obama will advance the forces of socialism upon this country would be wise to note that nothing welcomes state control over our economy, our privacy and our lives like war.
Paralleling Bush administration policies with the policies of a would-be McCain administration is not just a feigned political predisposition. The gross expansion of the executive branch we have witnessed throughout this war time regime, likening the office's authority to that of a king on everything from executive orders to prisoners of war to unchecked power of every kind, has been a ruinous development in the life of our republic, one which war has facilitated. And all signs point to its continuation in a war time McCain administration.
Unfortunately, McCain's opposition has likewise employed antagonistic rhetoric (although to a lesser degree) and called for troop surges and cross-border attacks, but he would be hard put to prove more militaristic than McCain. The future of America's militarism remains to be seen, although prudence would suggest its maintenance either way.
History tells us, as in the Roman Republic, how poisonous perpetual war and ruthless empire can be to democratic government. A vote for McCain could very well mean the invitation of America's eventual demise.
John Glaser is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at jwglaser@student.umass.edu.
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