Allahpundit rounds up some reports on McCain digging himself ever deeper in to the Ruling Class hole over Paul’s filibuster – best comment:
“Senator McCain is obviously well aware of the politics of this – he just doesn’t care,” said one McCain aide. “He’s doing what he thinks is right. Unlike many of these guys, he’s actually been involved in a few national security debates over the years. He knows that jumping on the Rand Paul black helicopters crazytrain isn’t good for our Party or our country, no matter what Twitter says.”
Just to clarify, “black helicopters crazytrain” is those people who think that we’ve built concentration camps in Montana and that blue helmeted UN troops are already here, ready to declare martial law. Paul isn’t within a country mile of such people. But I’ll tell you who is crazy – John McCain and all those establishment types, left and right, who think that we’re going the right thing in our War on Terror policies.
Those who have been reading this blog over the years know that I was an ardent supporter of President Bush’s policies regarding terror. 100% support of the invasion of Iraq. Still think it was the right thing to do. I believe that Iran is a gigantic threat and that we will have to deal with it militarily. But for goodness sakes, what happened between 2003 and today should cause some re-assessment of the best way to go about things. Clearly, maintaining relationships with Muslim tyrannies in the name of “anti-terror” policies is asinine. Clearly, giving Muslims the ability to freely vote for their own government doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for a government we like. Clearly, the Islamist radicals are more determined that ever – and ever more brutish in their treatment of non-Muslims (seriously; just google “Muslims attack church” and see how many hits you get, and how many very recent events).
The height of insanity is our decision to continue military aid to Egypt – including providing powerful F-16 aircraft – a Muslim Brotherhood regime which is the enemy of everything we hold dear. That is insane – and anyone want to bet where McCain stands on that? Paul is crazy for wanting a simple declaration that the President may not kill Americans on American soil without due process? Whatever you say, McCain.
For now, whatever it is we were trying to do in the Muslim world has come a cropper. It is time to withdraw and re-assess. Now, there is that one in a million chance that our withdrawal will actually cool down the Islamists. I very much doubt that. More than likely, it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness and they will resume their attack at the earliest opportunity. When that happens, however, we would be able to approach the whole issue un-tied to any past commitments and free to do what we wish. To just keep going on, grinding out with what we’ve been doing and adding to it increased drone attacks doesn’t seem wisdom in my view. To defend the President on drones simply because you want to be “tough on terrorism” is idiotic. It is time for a change, and Rand Paul sees it; McCain doesn’t.