McCain sees ‘Islamic extremism’ as our most serious economic threat

June 23, 2008

Fortune magazine asked Barack Obama about what he sees as the most serious long-term threat to the U.S. economy. His answer sounded pretty good: “If we don’t get a handle on our energy policy, it is possible that the kinds of trends we’ve seen over the last year will just continue. Demand is clearly outstripping supply. It’s not a problem we can drill our way out of. It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that’s required to find alternative fuels. I think it’s very important for the federal government to have a role in that process.”

Fortune also asked John McCain. (via Kevin Drum)

“Senator, what do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?” That was the first question we put to John McCain when he sat down for an interview with Fortune on a sunny afternoon in June…. [W]e were asking McCain to rise above the news and look ahead to the day seven months from now when, he hopes, he’ll be sitting in the Oval Office. We wanted to know what single economic threat he perceives above all others.

McCain at first says nothing…. He’s looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11. Finally he says, “Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.”

Now, I can appreciate the fact that terrorism can obviously have a real effect on an economy. But McCain seriously believes that radical Islamic extremism is not only the most serious long-term threat to the economy, but to “our very existence”?

I’m certainly not prepared to argue that America doesn’t have dangerous enemies; we do. It’s just that the politics of fear can lead to a certain unhealthy hysteria. The notion that, at most, several thousand religious nuts with no military equipment and practically no land, could seriously threaten “our very existence” is ridiculous. The idea that these same violent lunatics represent the “gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy” isn’t much better.

There were clearly more appropriate answers to the question. Kevin noted that McCain — after a striking 11-second delay — “apparently can’t come up with any better answer to Fortune’s question about economic threats. Not energy, not high taxes, not runaway entitlement growth, not healthcare, not globalization, not any of a dozen plausible answers that would have gone down fine with his base.”

Wait, it gets worse.

The McCain campaign also believes, and is willing to concede publicly, that additional terrorism before the election would give their chances a boost.

On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy – this according to McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.”

As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

Making this kind of acknowledgement can be politically tricky. I know Black isn’t suggesting that he’s hoping for another attack because it might benefit his candidate, but these kinds of concessions are wrought with political peril.

It’s why Fortune noted the “startling candor.” When asked if a terrorist attack would benefit one candidate over another, the appropriate response is to say electoral considerations pale in comparison to the seriousness of terrorism. Instead, McCain’s campaign manager chief campaign strategist effectively said, “Yep, terrorism would be good for us.” It’s a politically-tone deaf remark.

And it also happens to be substantively dubious. The Bhutto tragedy in December didn’t affect McCain’s standing in the polls at all — he still struggled in Iowa, and excelled in New Hampshire — and it’s hard to understand why the policies that were in place before an attack should be continued for four more years after one.

Is the Bush Administration Cabal planning on staging a terrorist attack to keep the republicans in office?

  • The Bush Criminal Enterprise is a ongoing terrorist attack on the United States.

    My prediction is a U.S. attack on Iran in mid September. The Corporate News Media will keep the propaganda going for 6-8 weeks (thru the election) that it was necessary and successful.

    If that fails to turn the election to McBush, don’t bet against the implementation of Presidential National Security Directive 51. Bush/Cheney cannot afford to have anyone take office next January that will take steps to reimplement the Constitution and the rule of law.

  • I think for them, anything is on the table, in order for their side to assume office in 2009.

  • While Black’s comment was sort of out of bounds, the more important takehome message of this account is that McCain really doesn’t have a grasp on the big picture. All he knows is military since he was born into the culture, and therefore is totally blind to everything else. If he were elected, it would be Bush III with a vengeance. I remember reading in the Old Testament something about one of the last kings of Israel when he got the throne saying to the common people that “My father beat you with whips, but I will beat you with thorns and scorpions.” If I remember correctly, and one of the right wingers will surely correct me if I’m wrong, Israel went under during his reign.

  • To be fair, continued violence in Iraq and Afghanistan are good for Obama.

    Nobody should want that, either. The question remains, who would be better for our nation’s safety?

    The fact is, McCain’s policies promote terrorism; specifically, by constantly bombing or threatening to bomb sovereign Arabic nations, the terrorists are easily able to recruit a new generation.

    Obama’s policies would actually undermine terrorism, combining diplomacy with moderate Arabs and attempting to eliminate terrorists where they actually exist – in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  • By that measure, the attacks helped Obama since he won Iowa, got second in New Hampshire etc….

  • It sounds like Rudy Giuliani has been advising the McCain campaign. Ask McCain a question for which he is unprepared (or is prepared!) and the answer is “9/11.”

    The Republicans have nothing to fear from “fear itself.” It’s their one-size-fits-all campaign platform.

  • McCain at first says nothing…. He’s looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11.

    Holy cow! It’s not like they asked for a soul searching or esoteric quality of life question. How can a presidential nominee in a year where the economy is the number one issue by far, not have a ready answer. One can only imagine that he was trying to find a Hanoi Hilton segue.

    But it also raises the question, has no one ever asked him this question before? I realize the media has been soft on him. Hell, Fortune is not exactly Mother Jones. He might have known that the economy might come up.

  • “McCain sees ‘Islamic extremism’ as our most serious economic threat”

    And god forbid the Joker escapes from Arkham Asylum and goes on a rampage.

    9/11
    Floundering war in Afghanistan with Osama still taunting us from his undisclosed location
    The utter failure of Iraq
    Katrina
    Enron
    Gas prices exploding and the Saudis playing the US like a fiddle
    the mortgage crisis

    Does anyone really think ANOTHER disaster would be a feather in the Republicans’ cap? The country is weary of one disaster after another (created or mishandled) by this adminstration. We’re disaster and crisis overloaded. If something were to happen before the election it would be viewed with suspicion and contempt. We’re in the homestretch of both Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

    Iran. Don’t bet on it. The Chinese have gotten very kozy with Iran and we’d be setting the world on fire. Expect alot of “Why I outta…”s from now until November, but it aint gonna happen.

  • From Gingrich to McCain there is a whole litany of neocons wishing for a terrorist attack. They never seem to fail to mention it almost as if they know one is being set up. If it happened it would be the third time on a republican watch so why would they think it would benefit them.

    It should say just the opposite, these guys are no good at protecting us from terrorists attacks….which they aren’t. Following “the money” and “who stands to benefit” the terrorists did not benefit from 9/11 …only the Bush corporate regime and Cheney’s KBR Blackwater. With the no bid oil contracts they now begin to tap that estimated $13 trillion over two decades that only cost them $1 trillion to get.(loss of human life is not a cost factor) and this does not take into account the consolidation of power that resulted.

    I feel that if the Bush/Cheney regime is not planning a false flag terrorist attack they are most certainly praying for one because they feel it will save their ass…it won’t…you couldn’t pay us enough to vote republican regardless of what happens.
    But with the democrats having a neocon wing of republicrats it really isn’t necessary to have a terrorists attack for neocons to keep their power…they get the dems to do their bidding now.

    McCain is bent and like Gulianni uses Islamo fascism as an answer to everything. Thank god I never have to worry about him being president.

  • I can tell you why McCain won in NH — he was the sanest person in the field.

    I suspect that Romney thought he was a lock, because he owns a big fancy house here & because of his “ties” to the area from having been a governor in MA, but he never had a serious chance in NH due to his off-the-charts phoniness quotient (even worse than McCain’s).

  • “Finally he says, “Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence.”

    McCain is right in the sense that the gravest threat is not radical extremism itself, but our misguided struggle against radical extremism. If the struggle interferes with or stalls our much needed focus on the world’s much more dire threats — global warming, energy crises, overpopulation, spiraling food prices, pandemics, extreme poverty, etc. — then, yes, our monomaniacal struggle against radical extremism will affect our very existence. The war in Iraq fits the misguided struggle framing extremely well. In the greater picture of threats, the war was and remains an extremely big loser for the world.

    This also very well represents the rigidity of McCain’s thinking that puts him in the same league as Bush and Cheney, who of course were stuck on missile defense against Korea prior to 911 and blind to the flashing lights warning about Osama flying winged missiles into skyscrapers.

  • I realize that global warming has gone out of fashion, even more so in terms of media attention than Iraq, I’m willing to wager, and I do appreciate Obama’s solidly grounded response, but I can’t help but feel that nobody that matters is grasping the threats that we face in the coming decades. And they are not just economic threats, and not just for the United States.

    The combined effects of global warming and oil depletion (yes, I know, peak oil is fringe stuff for crazies) will be catastrophic to the planet if we don’t take dramatic steps now.

    I’m disappointed that Obama, as intelligent and knowledgeable as he is, doesn’t connect, conflate both issues as one. They truly are.

  • btw Steve#…what is with this “Navy blockade of Iran” issue now being conjured in the House and the senate…House CON. Res 362. A declaration of war with Iran pushed by AIPAC (our 3rd congressional party). Pelosi already removed from a previous bill the provision that stated that Bush must get congressional approval from congress before he could attack Iran at the direct request of AIPAC. What up with that???

  • “The notion that, at most, several thousand religious nuts with no military equipment and practically no land, could seriously threaten “our very existence” is ridiculous. ”

    If you’re talking about the foreign ones, then yeah, I can believe that.

    It’s the home-grown whackjobs, who want to turn America into the Republic of Gilead, that scare the crap out of me.

  • CB says “The notion that, at most, several thousand religious nuts with no military equipment and practically no land, could seriously threaten “our very existence” is ridiculous.”

    Hate to disagree with you, Steve, but look what a handful of airplane hijackers have been able to accomplish in just the past 7 years. “Our very existence” depends on the rule of law, esp. the Constitution. What the Russkies weren’t able to accomplish in 40 years, even with the help of Joe McCarthy and his ilk, al Qaida has pulled off. Of course they wouldn’t have been nearly so successful if they didn’t have a White House full of co-conspirators…

  • Here is an answer: well, you see Fortune, the Chinese and the Indians, as well as a large part of the world is beginning to make substantial economic headway and with depressed wages and worker safety rules, they can undercut the prices of American made goods and service. Now, we have a delicate tightrope to walk because we believe capitalism leads to democracy and that makes the world safer. But in the interim it puts great strain on our international competitiveness.

    fuck and I do not have a wife’s millions to allow me time to ponder this question.

    subtle bash the chinese and other darker skinned folks; acknowledge REAL pressures many Americans face. And give the old Capitalism speech to the old world moneyed elements in the party for optics. Tally-ho. This guy is The Idiot: The Sequel.

  • There’s got to be something similar to Godwin’s Law for this…Using the threat of absolute annihilation to end discussion on any given topic. For example:

    Me: So, John, should we have Thai food or Greek for lunch?
    John McCain: If the terrorists blow up Greece, there won’t be any more Greek food.
    Me: [stares blankly]

    Maybe it can be called “McCain’s Law” or the act of threatening annihilation to end discussion can be “Pulling a McCain.” Of course, such phrases can also be used to describe tactics like the flip-flop-flip, forgetting where you are at a campaign event, or other such fun McCaintics

  • When the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem you see is a nail.

  • McCain actually has a point, though not in the way he intended.

    The direct cost of the 9/11 attacks was about $27 billion, including property damage and cleanup (the human costs were obviously more significant, but we’re talking about economics here).

    The DHS budget from 2002-2009 totals $312 billion (the 2009 budget is $50 billion, or about twice the direct costs of the 9/11 attacks). The Afghanistan war is estimated to cost $500 billion. God only knows how much is being spent by rural local law enforcement in masturbatory anti-terror training and equipment. And there are the intangible but real costs associated with making air travel so much more inconvenient. Let’s call the total cost a trillion dollars. That’s probably low.

    That’s not even counting the Iraq war’s estimated $2 trillion cost, because it’s probably unreasonable to say 9/11 caused us to spend that money; it was going to happen one way or another.

    The costs involved in staging the 9/11 attacks were negligible — a million dollars, at most. From a sheer economic perspective, if Islamic extremists can cause a trillion dollars of economic harm to the US for each million dollars they spend, they may well be the gravest long term economic threat. Think about that — for each dollar they spent, we’ve spent a million dollars in response. That’s a 99,999,900% rate of return from their perspective.

  • “McCain at first says nothing…. He’s looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11.”

    You know who else does that? Clue: he’s still our president.

  • The Chinese may be in the process of buying us, but I think the Saudis already own our current leaders. I dream of someone leaking a tape of Bush and Cheney discussing how awesome high gas prices are.

  • What would George (Carlin) say? WWGS

    Extremism, in any situation, is dangerous. To equate Islamic Extremism with “…the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy…” is ludicrous. Just take a look at what is transpiring right here in the Continental United States of America. What would billions of dollars and the additional resource of employed people, home-based National Guard performing their prescribed function, rebuilding of infrastructure, the care and education of millions of our children, adequate, affordable healthcare and a caring populace who place community above global politics do to shift our economy and that of the world? Pause for a moment and see through the eyes of compassion; fear heals nothing. Only Love is real.

    I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation

    peace,
    st john

  • Probably no one thought that an orphaned kid from a desert planet with a secondhand fighter was a threat to the Death Star or the Empire either.

    So I guess it’s not impossible that a few jihadists *could* be an existential threat (who would have imagined the collateral damage to the constitution when the twin towers fell?? not to mention what Brooks describes @21)… but I wouldn’t base my presidential run on claiming that’s the gravest *economic* threat I can imagine.

  • Here’s what McCain was trying to figure out how to say, without actually saying it:

    “The greatest economic threat to us is Israel, which is preparing to attack Iran, who will then attack the Saudi oil facilities and thereby cripple the US/world economy.”

    He of course short-handed that into “Islamic extremism”, because those damn Iranians ought to know when to just lay down and take being raped by their superiors, and any attempt to make us pay for any attack on them is by definition “extreme”.

  • Go see John Cusack’s War, Inc. for an amusing take on BushCo’s adventure.

  • “Senator, what do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?” […] Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11. Finally he says, “Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism […]

    By the time he “digested” (understood) the question and organised his thoughts to answer it, he forgot what, *precisely* the question had been. *All* he could remember of it was: “gravest threat”. Those are the words which brought up the automatic, Pavlov’s dog, response: “Islamic extremism”.

    It’s really not all that different from the hypothetical Bubba hearing “close the gun shows” when, in fact, the phrase is “close the gun shows loophole” (Mudcat thread). McCain had never been a “brainiac” (vide his school career) and is now getting older and forgetful on top of that.

  • As any expert on terrorism will tell you, the fundamental purpose of terrorism is to force the targeted government to restrict civil liberties, utilize fear as a political tool, and become militarized, authoritarian ‘security’ state, which, thanks to our national leadership, and the hysterical, infantile ignorance of the majority of our fellow citizens, is precisely what the 9/11 attacks have achieved. Bush & Co. responded precisely as bin Laden & Co. hoped, and McCain promises to do the same. A McCain (i.e Bush 3) presidency, is clearly the gravest long term threat to this country.

  • steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that’s required to find alternative fuels.

    Very poor wording, by Senator Obama. It feeds the conservative meme that Democrats are dreamers with their heads in the clouds.

    Alternative fuels don’t need to be FOUND.

    They exist, they’re just a bit more expensive than oil. Developing alternative energy means making it slightly cheaper than fossil fuel. Get THAT done and the whole game changes.

    We’re not that far off either. It’d take a president who’ll invest effort in slowing down alternative energy technology to keep us stuck at the rig and pump. A guy like John McCain.

    As for McCain…

    He’s right. If he’s president and continues borrowing Chinese money to bankroll wars against predominantly Muslim countries because a few extremists (and thousands of citizens just sick of us being there) are shooting at our troops. Yes, that will be the gravest economic threat of his presidency. That couldn’t be what he MEANT could it?

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