Originally published in the Valley News on December 14, 2007
Always in It to Win It
McCain's Persistence in Iraq Rooted in Vietnam Era
By Peter Jamison — Valley News staff writerNorth Haverhill — On a chill afternoon in mid-November, John McCain rode down Interstate 91 toward West Lebanon in a minivan. Orange light filled the van from the west, where the sun was setting into the hemlock-lined hills above Lake Morey. As he spoke to aides and reporters, McCain stared out the window through dark sunglasses, as though absorbed in the view from the highway of stone ledges and bare cornfields.
This was not the fabled "Straight Talk Express," the salon-on-wheels where McCain holds court with journalists for hours on end, but a smaller vehicle to ferry him to his motel, where the 71-year-old would enjoy some downtime before an evening stump speech at Dartmouth College. At his last campaign stop, in North Haverhill, McCain had treated the crowd to Navy jokes and railed loudly against federal pork projects. In this smaller, more private setting, he seemed subdued.
When one of the two reporters who had squeezed into the van asked what the biggest difference was between the current primary season and that in 2000, when the Arizona senator barnstormed his way to an 18-point victory over George Bush in the Granite State, McCain answered in a low, even voice.
"The major difference is, of course, in 2000, Sept. 11 hadn't happened," McCain said. In this year's election cycle, he said, "The dominant issue, as it should be, is the war."
Few would dispute that foreign policy looms large in the 2008 presidential campaign season. But among the issues that have so far defined McCain's struggle to win the GOP nomination — his politically costly support for immigration reform, his sometimes-awkward overtures to the party's socially conservative base, his relatively progressive approach to environmental issues — none are so central as the senator's determination to salvage an American victory in Iraq. That stance has proved a complex force in the primary campaign. While there is little doubt that it has cost McCain support here — a University of New Hampshire poll conducted in October showed that more than half of independents, a crucial voting bloc here and a big factor in McCain's 2000 New Hampshire primary win, opposed the war — news of subsiding violence in Baghdad has, for some, vindicated McCain's frequent calls for the current "surge" strategy, which involved sending more American troops to stabilize the Iraqi capital.
Polls show McCain tied for second with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire; both trail former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. But in the highly volatile Republican field — only 15 percent of Republican primary voters have settled on a candidate, according to a CNN/WMUR poll released this week — analysts say McCain's support for the new strategy in Iraq could still prove an asset.
"It may just be the case that in the last week or so before the New Hampshire primary Republican voters may take another look at him, and that is because of his steadfast stance on the war and because Republicans here feel like he would be a solid commander-in-chief," said Dante Scala, a political-science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
"I think it's fair enough to say that Romney and Giuliani didn't waver in their support of the war," Scala said. "But McCain has really made it a priority."
Allegiance to Armed Forces
The roots of that priority run deep, observers say. They can be traced back through the early stages of McCain's political career, through his years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and his pre-politics job as a Navy fighter pilot.
But most significantly, those familiar with McCain say, his stand on the Iraq War can be traced to the post-Vietnam years of the 1970s, when he and other combat veterans grappled with the lingering effects, both foreign and domestic, of military defeat.
As the South Vietnamese government collapsed and members of the anti-war movement rose to prominence in the nation's political and cultural life, veterans were a wary group, said Robert Timberg, former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and author of the 1999 biography John McCain: An American Odyssey. Many were reluctant to wear their uniforms in the street.
"Any Vietnam veteran can tell you that that period was a really dark time, not just for them, but for America as they conceived of it. And so when Senator McCain talks about the impact of losing a war, that's in many ways the period he's going back to, a time when the nation just seemed to fold in on itself," said Timberg, who is now editor-in-chief of Proceedings, an independent military-affairs journal, and himself a Marine veteran of Vietnam. "I think that makes him recognize, makes him feel, that losing a war is not something you just put behind you."
In public appearances, McCain tends to cast the perils of an Iraq defeat in geopolitical terms, with a particular focus on the rise of Iran. "The consequences of failure are best described by the president of Iran," McCain said during his stump speech in North Haverhill last month. "About three weeks ago, the president of Iran stated, and I quote him, he said, 'The Americans will leave Iraq, and when they do there will be a void, and we, the Iranians, will fill that void.'
"Well, my friends, do you want the Iranians to be in control in Iraq? I don't think so. This is the same country that has dedicated itself to the extinction of the state of Israel and is building nuclear weapons."
But those who know McCain perceive a less obvious personal stake for him in Iraq. Merle Schotanus, a Grantham resident and retired Army colonel who taught at the National War College in Washington, D.C. when McCain studied there in 1974, said he perceives in McCain's current war policy a desire to avoid the period of humiliation for the armed forces that followed Vietnam.
"John's stand on Iraq is a bit puzzling, but I kind of think I know where he's coming from. He's coming from, in part, loyalty to the military," Schotanus, a former New Hampshire state representative who backed McCain in 2000 and plans to again in 2008, said. "The U.S. Army really took a beating in Vietnam. It took us a good 10 years to rebuild the army to what it was after we got involved in Vietnam. And, I'm sorry to say, I think we're going through the same phenomenon."
McCain has spoken often on the campaign trail about his desire to expand the armed forces. In a recent essay published in the journal Foreign Affairs, he says he would increase the combined size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps from 750,000 to 900,000 troops.
At the same time, McCain says he is opposed to reinstating a national draft. "It would be a terrific mistake," McCain said in an interview, citing, among other problems with forced conscription, the historic ease with which the wealthy and privileged have escaped service. "The all-volunteer force is working, and it's the most professional and best trained and equipped we've ever had."
'Whatever is Necessary'
McCain's support for a bigger military matches up with his consistent stance on Iraq. He has long argued that more U.S. troops were needed, and broke publicly with the Bush administration over former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's lean approach to waging the war.
Still, when taking the long view of McCain's positions on U.S. conflicts abroad over his political career, a general trend is not immediately obvious.
In 1983, his first year as a U.S. congressman, McCain bucked the will of one of his political heroes, President Ronald Reagan, and voted against extending the deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon.
Under circumstances that inevitably invite comparison with Iraq — a fragile Middle Eastern state, divided among ethnic factions and under the influence of meddling neighbors — McCain said U.S. troops should leave. Prior to the vote on the House floor, he described his reasoning in language that to the listener in 2007 may sound uncanny:
"The fundamental question is, What is the United States' interest in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, What peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, What government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask, How can the U.S. stabilize the region?"