At some point, not too long ago, the political establishment decided that John McCain is an expert on international affairs and national security. I’ve never really understood why — by all appearances, McCain is frequently confused and bewildered by basic questions — but everyone seems to assume that the senator has developed an almost unparalleled expertise on these issues.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, with increasing frequency, McCain reminds us that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about<\/a> most of the time.<\/p>\n Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.<\/p>\n He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”<\/p>\n Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All of this is, of course, wrong. Al Qaeda is Sunni; Iran is Shiite. This<\/i> is “common knowledge.” McCain was speaking with authority about the basics in the Middle East, and getting the regional dynamic backwards.<\/p>\n This happens quite a bit with the Republican candidate. Quite right. How do you suppose the media would react if Obama had screwed up Middle Eastern basics this badly? Hell, Obama talked about pursuing terrorists into Pakistan and that’s still<\/i> considered a gaffe for reasons I’ll never really understand. But McCain thinks — indeed, he insists it’s “common knowledge” — that al Qaeda is being trained in Iran to fight in Iraq? As Kevin put it<\/a>, “This is hardly some trivial mistake. It’s like accusing Pat Robertson of supporting NARAL. It shows a complete disconnect with what’s going on in Iraq.”<\/p>\n On a related note, Time’s Joe Klein noted<\/a> today:<\/p>\n Matt Yglesias notices that John McCain has gone back to his old, irresponsible, incendiary baloney-slicing on Iraq. You may recall that on the night McCain won the Republican nomination, he — accurately — emphasized sectarian violence as the major threat if the U.S. didn’t leave Iraq carefully. Now he’s back to his utterly bogus “victory” or “defeat” in the war against Al Qaeda…. It is outrageous and dishonorable that John McCain continues to purposely oversimplify this situation for imagined political gain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That sounds right, but I’m still curious about something. Klein’s criticism, while certainly welcome, is premised on the notion that McCain isn’t clueless, he’s just dishonest. I’m still of the opinion that it could be both.<\/p>\n In other words, people assume McCain is an expert on national security and international affairs, so when he gets basic facts wildly wrong, it must be because he’s trying to deceive voters. I think that’s largely right, but I also question whether McCain’s actually an expert in the first place.<\/p>\n This is especially true with regards to Iraq. McCain was wrong before the invasion (he said the conflict would be short and easy); he was wrong at the start of the occupation (he supported the Rumsfeld strategy and said we simply needed to “stay the course”); and he’s been wrong about the surge (he predicted widespread political reconciliation, none of which has happened).<\/p>\n As recently as November 2006, McCain couldn’t even talk about his own opinions on the war without reading prepared notes<\/a> on national television. As recently as March 2007, McCain was embarrassing himself by insisting<\/a> that Gen. Petraeus travels around Baghdad “in a non-armed Humvee” (a comment that military leaders literally laughed at, and which CNN’s Michael Ware responded to by saying McCain’s credibility “has now been left out hanging to dry.”)<\/p>\n And now he’s absolutely certain that al Qaeda is being trained in Iran to fight in Iraq, a claim that any college student in Foreign Affairs 101 would realize is ridiculous.<\/p>\n I don’t doubt that McCain is willing to fudge the facts to get votes, but let’s also not rule out the possibility that his alleged expertise is a total sham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At some point, not too long ago, the political establishment decided that John McCain is an expert on international affairs and national security. I’ve never really understood why — by all appearances, McCain is frequently confused and bewildered by basic questions — but everyone seems to assume that the senator has developed an almost unparalleled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThe WaPo’s Michael Shear added, “The mistake threatened to undermine McCain’s argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists. In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.”<\/p>\n