McCain: More Wars

Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday,

"It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

"And right now - we're gonna have a lot of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] to treat, my friends, we're gonna have a lot of combat wounds that have to do with these terrible explosive IEDs that inflict such severe wounds. And my friends, it's gonna be tough, we're gonna have a lot to do."

I do not disagree with him- as I'm sitting here just counting the minutes until I'm up watching CNN 24/7 in 2008 for the end of the Iranian/Arab/Israeli/U.S. ceasefire...

I'd like to see him say how he'd like to STOP those wars from happening.

I had secretly hoped that John McCain would rise to be a Zachary Taylor, a Grant or an Eisenhower... a military man who understood the horrors of war -- and would do his best to keep the country out of future wars.

Zachary Taylor (Mexican War/12th President) "Old Rough and Ready" was prepared to go to war to keep the Union together in the dispute over how many slave states would be carved out of the land "liberated" from Mexico. His resolve kept America from tearing itself apart for a decade. It's still debated whether he was assassinated for his resolve.

U.S. Grant - (US Civil War/18th President) His foreign successes far outweighed his domestic governance. That said, his Administration signed treaties and settled wars rather than engage in them.

Theodore Roosevelt (Spanish-American War/26th President) He built up the Navy forming the Great White Fleet, and sent the Army to the Philippines to fight an insurgency - but also built roads and sent teachers as well as soldiers.

I'm not going to discount his American Imperialistic policies, including the expansion of the Monroe Doctrine to include all of Latin America. However, I will point out that Roosevelt was more of a peace-keeper than an a war-monger. He gained international praise for helping negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Roosevelt later arbitrated a dispute between France and Germany over the division of Morocco. Some historians have argued these latter two actions helped to avert a World War.

Ike Eisenhower (WWII/34th President) Ended the shooting of the Korean War, did not engage the US military in the Suez Canal what-have-you, kept us out of Vietnam after realizing the commitment needed to engage in that conflict. He did, however, plan the Bay of Pigs and was very much involved in the chess match with Russia -- but he did keep it contained as a Cold War rather than a hot one.

Again, I had hoped that John McCain would be a leader with the sensibility of Teddy Roosevelt "Speak softly, but carry a BIG stick."

But his Straight Talk seems to speak more of inevitability.

How sad.