[Peace-discuss] Cockburn on McCain

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Wow, Carl. Did YOU send this?? Good article. THANKS!!
 --Jenifer
 

--- On Sat, 9/6/08, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:

From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Cockburn on McCain
To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Saturday, September 6, 2008, 5:06 PM

	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. 

	###
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080906/bb92c49f/attachment.html