{"id":1724,"date":"2017-07-22T21:51:12","date_gmt":"2017-07-23T01:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1724"},"modified":"2017-07-22T21:51:12","modified_gmt":"2017-07-23T01:51:12","slug":"real-john-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html","title":{"rendered":"The Real John McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

As soon as John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, Democrats and <\/em>Republicans in Washington and the press spared no opportunity to lavish praise upon this lifelong government employee.<\/p>\n

McCain deserves none of the tributes that have been paid to him.<\/p>\n

McCain cheated on his first wife, the one who waited for him during his captivity as a prisoner of war, and left her for an heiress.\u00a0 Financially speaking, this proved to be a smart move, for courtesy of his second marriage McCain has succeeded in becoming an extremely wealthy man.<\/p>\n

Of course, the taxpayers that he has managed to bleed for well over three decades also deserve credit for McCain\u2019s affluence.\u00a0 In return, they have received an ever-burgeoning administrative state, relentless illegal immigration from the Third World, and, of course, war<\/em>\u2014and all while McCain has pretended to be a \u201cconservative.\u201d<\/p>\n

But we should focus here on McCain\u2019s record of demanding war, for thanks to his influence, hundreds of thousands of people, both foreigners and Americans alike, who would have otherwise been alive today are dead.<\/p>\n

And hundreds of thousands more are traumatized, orphaned, homeless, maimed, and continually besieged by those murderous terrorist organizations, like ISIS, that have taken over their countries after McCain\u2019s policies prevailed.<\/p>\n

McCain is not alone in having their blood on his hands.\u00a0 Yet in a Regime, a Government-Media-Complex, comprised of warmongers, McCain enjoys the dubious distinction of being the warmonger par excellence.<\/p>\n

On the false pretense that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat against the United States via the \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d (WMDs) that he never possessed, McCain urged as loudly and tirelessly as anyone for war<\/em>.\u00a0 Those libertarians<\/a> and old right conservative sorts who exposed holes in the WMD narrative and forecasted the disaster to which such a war would lead were dismissed, ignored, or mocked<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Estimates of casualties vary, but today, some 14 years after McCain got his way, anywhere between 195,000 and possibly one million Iraqis are dead.\u00a0 The Iraq Body Count<\/a> project found that during the decade following the invasion, 174,000 Iraqis were killed. Of this number, 112,000-123,000 were civilian noncombatants.\u00a0 At present, the number is closer to 200,000 civilian noncombatant deaths.<\/p>\n

Between 2003 and 2014, nearly 5,000 American service members lost their lives in this war that McCain and his ilk cooked on the basis of a lie.<\/p>\n

Yet contractors, aid relief workers, and journalists are also among those who lost their lives.<\/p>\n

While we can tabulate numbers, the pain, suffering, and trauma endured by the loved ones of those killed is incalculable.<\/p>\n

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and American corpses that McCain and his comrades left in the wake of their rush to war, there are that many more who have lived but who suffer daily.<\/p>\n

Reportedly, over 1,600 Americans deployed to do battle in Iraq became amputees.<\/p>\n

Between Iraq and Afghanistan (another country to which McCain and his fellow neocons wanted to see Democracy exported), the Pentagon, in 2009, estimated that as many as 360,000 Americans who served were suffering traumatic brain injuries.<\/p>\n

In 2007, a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine <\/em>found that approximately one-third of the 103,788 troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffered from multiple, major psycho-social disorders.\u00a0 Veterans were committing suicide and no small number suffered from PTSD.<\/p>\n

Upon conducting their study of 10,000 Iraqi school children, the Iraqi Society of Psychiatrists and the World Health Organization determined that no fewer than seventy percent<\/em> of Iraqi children are also in bad mental health.\u00a0 Some have ended their own lives.<\/p>\n

Possibly most heartbreaking of all is that McCain\u2019s war, according to a 2012 UNICEF study of Iraq households, resulted in the production of 800,000 to one million Iraqi orphans.\u00a0 About five percent of all Iraqi children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents.<\/p>\n

Millions of Iraqis, their homes destroyed, have been displaced.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of school teachers and thousands of Iraqi doctors had been murdered by criminals and insurgents within three years of the invasion, and hundreds of other doctors had been abducted.<\/p>\n

None of this even takes account of the vacuum that the US created in toppling Saddam Hussein, a vacuum that the Islamic State filled and that has exponentially exacerbated the chaos in Iraq.<\/p>\n

So far, I have only focused on Iraq, with some nods to Afghanistan. But these are hardly the only two disastrous wars for which McCain has advocated throughout his long, long career.<\/p>\n

Nor has McCain ever given so much as an indication that he has the slightest regret over Iraq and Afghanistan.\u00a0 In fact, in the face of this ocean of blood and suffering for which he pushed, he has continued to urge more of the same.<\/p>\n

For all of the attacks that McCain and his ilk have made against President Trump for the latter\u2019s tweets and the like, let\u2019s not forget that this is the same veteran senator and former presidential candidate who expressed his support for attacking Iran by singing<\/a><\/em>, \u201cBomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor was McCain a stranger to twitter.\u00a0 On the eve of Libya\u2019s Muammar Gadhaffi\u2019s death, the stately McCain tweeted<\/a>: \u201cQaddafi on his way out, Bashar al Assad [of Syria] is next.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Libya is another country that McCain thought President Obama waited too long in ruining. In 2011, he appeared on Wolf Blitzer\u2019s<\/a> program and forewarned of \u201cthe great task ahead\u201d of \u201cbuilding a democracy in a country that\u2019s never known it.\u201d (McCain, here, reveals that these are not defensive wars that he favors; they are ideological crusades, specifically, a crusade for Democracy.)<\/p>\n

McCain expressed irritation that it took Obama as long as it did, by his lights, to attack Libya.\u00a0 Had Obama not led \u201cfrom behind,\u201d had he used \u201cthe full weight of American air power\u201d sooner, \u201cit would have been gone\u2014over a long time ago [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Libya, being as it is in a state of \u201cchaotic unrest<\/a>\u201d and \u201ctorn by civil war and battles<\/a> with ISIS,\u201d is far worse than it ever was under Gadhaffi.<\/p>\n

Syria is another target of McCain\u2019s.\u00a0 He aches for the US government to force \u201cregime change\u201d and plant Democracy, hence proving that he\u2019s learned absolutely nothing from the blood-soaked, world-shattering failures of his foreign policy of choice in Iraq and Libya.<\/p>\n

We could go on.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: John McCain is responsible for suffering and death that are as immeasurable as they were avoidable.<\/p>\n

Only those of weak character can ignore or deny this verdict.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As soon as John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, Democrats and Republicans in Washington and the press spared no opportunity to lavish praise upon this lifelong government employee. McCain deserves none of the tributes that have been paid to him. McCain cheated on his first wife, the one who waited for him during…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Real John McCain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Real John McCain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As soon as John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, Democrats and Republicans in Washington and the press spared no opportunity to lavish praise upon this lifelong government employee. McCain deserves none of the tributes that have been paid to him. McCain cheated on his first wife, the one who waited for him during…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-07-23T01:51:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Real John McCain","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Real John McCain","og_description":"As soon as John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, Democrats and Republicans in Washington and the press spared no opportunity to lavish praise upon this lifelong government employee. McCain deserves none of the tributes that have been paid to him. McCain cheated on his first wife, the one who waited for him during…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2017-07-23T01:51:12+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html","name":"The Real John McCain","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-07-23T01:51:12+00:00","dateModified":"2017-07-23T01:51:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/07\/real-john-mccain.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Real John McCain"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1725,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}