8-11-08, 10:09 am

I recently showed parts of Eugene Jarecki’s brilliant documentary, Why We Fight, in my summer class on the history of imperialism. The documentary, a critique of US foreign policy and the Military Industrial Complex it serves, centers on the organized lying, propaganda, and White House-directed subversion even of military intelligence and the CIA, that produced the Iraq invasion and occupation. It should be required viewing for Americans, although it would give them a different picture of John McCain, one of its “talking heads,” than the one his handlers are pushing today.

The great strength of the documentary is its use of government figures, including neo-conservatives, to in effect indict the either directly or indirectly US policy. In that sense it is more effective as an educational tool than Michael Moore’s far more entertaining Fahrenheit 9/11.

Here the most trenchant critiques, some frankly in an anti-US policy sense to the left of positions that I would take, come from retired intelligence officers, former CIA agents, former employees of the military industrial complex who have come to the conclusion that it is a vast and corrupt machine whose purpose is to amass a limitless amount of wealth and power, whatever the consequences may be for the American people and the people of the world

But John McCain is in this documentary. And, while he is hardly a “defector” from Military Industrial Complex, he sounds like a critic of US foreign policy.

Was John McCain a “flip flopper” in the 2006 documentary from the militant pro-Iraq invasion positions he took earlier or from his “surge” cheerleading today? Was John McCain then fantasizing that he was Dwight Eisenhower, who emerges as a very positive figure in the Why We Fight documentary in 2006, or is he fantasizing that he is a cross between General George Patton and George W. Bush today? Is he having an identity crisis?

In American political campaigns in the past, “truth squads” were organized to ask candidates embarrassing questions about their past positions, to expose them as liars, fakes, etc. My all time personal favorite is the 1948 presidential campaign where the Democrats had a truth squad hound the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey to clarify his position on major questions, which he constantly dodged. When he was told for example that President Truman advocated TVA programs for the Missouri and Columbia Valleys and asked what his position for “our great river valleys” was, he answered “our rivers should abound with fish.”

Although it is much harder to do today, a truth squad ought to go after McCain and question him about his comments in the film. Also, it would really be fascinating to show in commercials excerpts from his comments in the film contrasted with excerpts from his comments before and after.

For example the film begins with McCain saying that the US is the greatest force for good in the world and “we have an obligation not to go out and fight and start wars but to spread democracy any way we can.” A truth squad might ask McCain if Bush met the obligation “not to go out and fight and start wars” in Iraq and if he did by supporting the war in ways that were sometimes greater than Bush himself?

But McCain goes on to utter a word that US politicians, both Republicans and most Democrats have been afraid to utter since the beginning of the cold war. He actually says that the debate today is “when does the US go from a force for good and when does it become a force for imperialism?” Yes, John McCain used the eleven letter word imperialism. The truth squad might ask him to define American imperialism. Does he agree, with the documentary of which he is a part that much of the world today sees the US intervention as imperialism? Since he recognizes the dangers of imperialism, how would he as president confront those dangers as president?

Assuming McCain did not physically attack the truth squad members, they could go on with even more powerful questions. The Military Industrial Complex, as great a taboo for politicians of both parties as imperialism, is the center of the documentary’s analysis of US policy McCain actually says in the documentary that on “President Eisenhower’s concern about the military industrial complex, his words have unfortunately come true.”

Does McCain really agree as he said with Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address that the Military Industrial Complex has now come to wield enormous and unchecked power in the US? What will he do about that, since the military budget is more than ten times what it was under Eisenhower and nearly three times what it was when he joined Congress in 1983? Will he undertake reforms to curb the power of the military industrial complex?

McCain even goes a bit beyond Eisenhower who did not directly criticize corporate power with the comment that Eisenhower was worried “that priorities were set more by what benefits corporations than what benefits the country.” Now the truth squaders could, assuming they had not been put in preventive detention, ask how he would challenge the power of the corporations to set priorities for US foreign policy, since he has at least in the documentary suggested that he thinks they do?.

Later, the documentary focuses brilliantly on how the military industrial complex works, how it in effect wins congressional support by spreading jobs through every congressional district, “low balling” bids which eventually will cost far more than the original estimates, hiring at many times their past salaries former military, congressional and executive branch members to serve as lobbyists.

McCain jumps in here to say that “there is too close a relationship...it borders on corruption in the behavior of some of these individuals in both industry and the Pentagon.” The truth squad might ask McCain if he agrees with the documentary on that close relationship as it pertains to Congress and perhaps, given his record himself and his friends in Congress.

But there is one final moment in which McCain really puts him on the line. As the documentary goes on to detail the history of Halliburton and Dick Cheney, from the time that he gave them contracts as Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush, to the increase in his personal wealth by nearly 60 times as Halliburton CEO in the Clinton years, to Halliburton’s unprecedented profiteering even by Military Industrial Complex standards in the Iraq occupation McCain says.

“It looks bad. Apparently Halliburton more than once has overcharged the federal government, I would have a public investigation of what they had done.” Cheney then calls McCain’s office and McCain says the vice president is on the phone and then laughs.

The truth squaders might ask McCain if he would demand a full investigation of the Halliburton Cheney relationship, letting the chips fall where they may and instituting criminal charges if necessary. Or would he simply go back to the old policy, to paraphrase the former President of General Motors and incoming Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, in 1953, “what’s good for General Motors is good for the USA.” Then McCain would really have something to laugh about.

Finally I would have the truth squad ask McCain if he agrees with the documentary that he participated in, which shows the farce of precision bombing, the women and children killed in the attacks, the suffering of the Iraqi people created by the war and the occupation, whose disastrous failures produced the insurgency? Does he agree with the trenchant indictment of US imperialism, from the former CIA man and Asia scholar Chalmers Johnson? Does he agree with the indictment of the Congress that he was a part of? Does he agree with the powerful and accurate critique of the US involvement in the Vietnam War?

Would he listen to the retired intelligence officers, and the others who were forced out of the government or resigned in protest because of the Bush policies? Does he see the Iraq invasion as a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the American people for the purpose of controlling the oil of the Middle East and informing the world that any criticism or opposition to US policy can and may be met by such unilateral military force, which is the documentary’s major theme, along with its analysis of the Military Industrial Complex.

John McCain needs to clarify his “straight talk,” since these statements are with his many other wildly contradictory ones, both before and after, on the record. Many of the statements he made in Why We Fight are good, but I don’t believe for a minute that they in any way reflect any policy that one might expect from him, given his statements and record both before and after. I also believe that he would literally fall over his feet to disavow those statements and put his militarist foot deeply into his mouth if he were confronted with them.

--Norman Markowitz teaches history at Rutgers University.