[Peace-discuss] Cockburn on McCain

[C. G. Estabrook]

	McCain, the bogus maverick 
	Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:47:56 GMT 
	Alexander Cockburn

The following is Press TV's [Iranian state media --CGE] exclusive interview with Alexander Cockburn, the founder and editor of Counterpunch magazine, on the day of John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota: 

Press TV: Tell us a little bit about the heroism of John McCain. 

Cockburn: Anyone listening to the convention will have heard the story of his intrepid conduct as an aviator and his great bravery when he was captive of the North Vietnamese. We and others have published several challenges to this story saying in fact that the narrative of McCain facing down his torturers is a lot of nonsense. 

Actually McCain was saved by Vietnamese civilians and well cared for after his quite serious accident, descending after bombing civilians from his airplane. 

There are allegations by people who shared his captivity that he received extremely favorable treatment and even allegations that he confided information to his captors which enabled them to respond more skillfully to American attacks. 

We recently published a piece by the wife of a veteran who was in prison camp at the same time as McCain, challenging the entire story. I do not think actually these stories have got much traction. People are very nervous of challenging McCain's war record. Even people on the liberal side who would have a motive to try and cut down the heroism stuff are very cautious because they think that there would be a backlash. 

There was a famous political race where the Republicans were going after a Democrat who was a veteran who lost two or three limbs and they were merciless in abusing this poor man because he was a political opponent. 

Press TV: The advisors of John McCain have not come under much scrutiny. Just tell us a little bit about who his advisors are. 

Cockburn: His advisors are an appalling bunch of people. I start with Phil Graham, a former US senator from Texas who is one of his major economics advisors. If any one single person could be blamed for the subprime market disasters which have afflicted ordinary people in America it's Phil Graham because he was the most influential of the US senators who removed regulations which might have curbed the ability of large financial interests to start the subprime crisis going. He was also the Texas senator who made it possible to remove restrictions which prevented people from doing this whole derivatives market which many people see as one of the core sources for financial instability in the capital markets today. If there is one person whom you could actually label as responsible for the present disaster it is Phil Graham. 

On the foreign policy side, of course, you have Randy Scheunemann who was one of the leading architects of the attack on Iraq in 2003 and was drawing a lot of money for the Georgian government at the same time as he was drawing money from the McCain campaign. 

There are numerable other major corporate interests behind McCain. He has quite tight relationships with the telecommunications industry particularly AT&T. 

The main thing about McCain is that this reputation for being a maverick that he's built up is completely bogus. We've pointed this out many times on our website that he would rise up in the Senate and make a magnificent speech opposing earmarks (you go to Washington you want some money for your town or your state and you do some deal and you get the money - Miss Palin did that from Alaska, everybody does it.) Then McCain would give this fervent denunciation of villainy and outrage of an earmark and the special interest and then he'd go and the he'd sit down and vote for them. So it's all a complete bunch of nonsense. 

Every now and again you see a black face popping up in this convention giving somehow the impression that there's some kind of diversity. Actually in the whole of that convention which is about 2500 delegates, there are precisely 36 black people; that's 1.5 percent. 

The Democratic convention was genuinely diverse. You actually had about 25 percent African Americans. You had about 12 percent Hispanics. Everybody's admitting that this Republican convention is the whitest, oldest convention in Republican memory. But if you look at networks - particularly when they mention Obama, boom!, you see a black face. I must have looked at the same black guy about 150 times. The whole thing is a very very decorous theater. Nothing to do with political reality. 

Press TV: John McCain was the chairman of the board of the International Republican Institute. Just tell us a little bit about that organization. 

Cockburn: It's one of these endless groups in Washington that are devoted to expanding the American power and corporate influence abroad. 

McCain is particularly interested in intervention policy in Latin America as well as the rest of the world. Not to say that there aren't exactly the same interests operating on the Democratic side. One of the more powerful ones, which people do not talk about much, is the National Endowment for Democracy which funds a lot of these interventions which is congressionally funded these days and poured money into Georgia. 

When you start turning up the various interest groups, look at the AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), the Israeli lobby organization. One of the very first things that happened to Miss Palin was she was hauled in front of them and they pretty much put her on the spot and said sing for your supper, which of course she duly did. 

Press TV: Let's talk a little about your hemisphere. There has been a resurgent independence movement in so many countries such as with Hugo Chavez and others. 

Cockburn: After decades of torture and kleptocracy, the situation has adjusted… the weakness of the Bush regime has been very beneficial for these countries because they were so wrapped up in adventures in the Middle East that they let things slip in Latin America. 

Obama has made speeches which caused some people on the, I hesitate to say, left, and the more liberal left end of the political spectrum that there might be a change in policy. But obviously the McCain end of it is to see a total reassertion. 

The convention is fairly ludicrous. Yesterday we had speech after speech running against Washington and the press. If anyone owns Washington it's the Republicans. The Republicans have owned it for eight years, they've run congress for six of those eight years. They've got seven of nine of the justices on the Supreme Court. So if anyone owns Washington it's the Republicans. It's kind of ludicrous to listen to that and not one single word about what they propose to do about anything. It's a disheveled, pathetic little convention. It reminds me of the Goldwater convention in 1964. 

Press TV: McCain said that the US troop presence in Iraq could well last over a century. We know Moqtada al-Sadr has laid down arms as a timetable seems to have been drawn up and, in fact, the Bush administration even talked about it. How do you think Iraq and Afghanistan would view a McCain presidency? 

Cockburn: He probably knows as well as anyone that the surge is fairly bogus. I mean, the conditions have changed in Iraq for a whole bunch of reasons including the fact that the whole civil war is effectively over and the Shias have effectively won and Iran basically told Moqtada to cool it… to withdraw his men. In a sense, the Americans and Iran have a common interest in the existing government of Iraq which is clearly being more and more assertive and is now laying down these timetables - troops out of Iraq by 2011. The tactical position of the Iraqi government has changed immeasurably even inside six months. McCain's stuff about a century sounds completely absurd. 

Afghanistan is a whole different matter. That's where Obama didn't want to seem like a defeatist because he has this nuanced position on Iraq. He was against the war when he was not in the US Senate. Since he got in the Senate he has voted for money for the war the same as every other senator has, so substantively his position has not meant anything at all. 

[Following John McCain's speech] 

Cockburn: I think that the courageous interventions by Liz (Houricane, Code Pink) and her comrades did actually throw him off a little bit. I think they broke his momentum. He got thrown off at that point. 

I thought in general it was a pretty weak speech. The shape of the speech was weird. It seemed to go backwards and forwards. He ended with the POW stuff at the end. The crowd got a bit confused about the attack on the Republicans which was him cashing in his chips as a maverick. 

On the whole, I think it was a tired speech… didn't have much energy in it. He was boosting his own program which I don't think anyone will believe a word of. Both parties are totally committed to drilling and nuclear power. Obama is for nuclear power. There was a lot of fairly crude misrepresentation of Obama's positions which will be the theme of the first debate. 

There was a story by the Associated Press this morning which went through Palin's speech and isolated a number of direct distortions of what Obama is actually promising. 

I think they are fairly desperate. They haven't got the slightest idea of what to do, so they went for basically the character issue with McCain, a bit of flag-wagging. They are nervous of having him offer himself as a real militarist candidate because people have had eight years of that kind of stuff. They're in a jam. I don't think they will get a huge bounce out of this. 

Don't forget that Ron Paul, the libertarian who is actually a Republican, had a huge rally in Saint Paul. If you drive from where I live up to Seattle, Washington… the only signs you see on I-5 are signs for Ron Paul. There is a big scale in the Republican party who are libertarians who do not believe in intervention in foreign wars and who do devoutly believe in the protections offered by the constitution. So there is a lot of disillusionment with the Republican party on that end. 

You know the African Americans and Hispanics are going to turn out big time for Obama. Even though CNN did its best how many black and Hispanic faces did you see? Their base is pretty slim and I don't think he really secured the independent vote there although that is his problem. 

He could have gone for the red meat and said the Americans are going to face up to the Russians and we're going to go back to the days of the Cold War and stand toe-to-toe with the totalitarian beast and if it means going to nuclear war we'll do it. He couldn't dream of doing that so he said he was for peace. They're kind of caught between the number of stools and I do not think it was at all a convincing performance. 

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