Right-wing hitman Ted Sampley famously accused John McCain of being the "Manchurian candidate" when McCain challenged George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primaries.  Sampley's vile character assassination foreshadowed the swift boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004 and were just as baseless, but fallacious as that may have been, McCain does have an unspoken and under-reported agenda that is surprisingly transparent and solidly documented.  While perhaps not a member directly, he orbited like a satellite around that now-defunct neocon flagship, the Project for the New American Century.

For those who have not noticed, the Global War on Terror has morphed into what is now being labeled as "The Long War".

Soon after the neo-cons got their "Pearl Harbor", former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Americans what to expect. "Forget about 'exit strategies, we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines."

Donald Rumsfeld is today a discredited and widely reviled figure. Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's successor as Defense secretary, is generally admired for manifesting qualities that Rumsfeld lacked -- a willingness to listen not least among them. Yet on one crucial point, the two see eye to eye: Both believe that the United States has no alternative but to wage a global war likely to last decades.

LA Times The 'Long War' Fallacy by Andrew J. Bacevich

Speaking at West Point in April of this year, Gates, echoed his predecessor's assessment. "There are no exit strategies." Gates described a "generational campaign" entailing "many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world."

I've been advised to keep my perverse, unseemly Buchanan fetish to myself. But this is just tooooo good. Today, crazy uncle Pat strongly (and I mean he all but paints a big red "T" on the man) suggests that John McCain and the Neo-Cons are classic American traitors.

The hot topic lately seems to be how and why Barack Obama should be hitting John McCain with every negative attack imaginable.  The logic goes that while we all despise negatives, they work.  It is said that we may be the party and people of high minded ideals, but to succeed we need to get down in the gutter with Republicans and tear down John McCain.  

Republicans are playing to their base by being crass and combative.  Neocons are all about picking fights to further their own cause.  I hope that isn’t what we are becoming.  I hope to bring my kids into a world where pride, greed, and religion aren’t bringing about the deaths of millions of innocent people.  We are rewarding a strategy of bluster and aggression.  As long as we judge people by who has the biggest pair, hate and aggression will permeate to every aspect of our global society.

Barack Obama talks about the politics of raising everyone up, rather than tearing them down.  If you really believe this is the man who best represents your ideals then let him lead the country and party on the path he has chosen rather than push him and us to be something we are not.

Here's a primer on what has been unfolding in the Caucusus, and how it has affected the political debate here in America.  I'm aware this has been blogged about here before, this is just my take on it.

The U.S. military and industrial complex will use Russian aggression against Georgia as an excuse to amp up military and verbal aggression against Russia in general. I believe it is an attempt to marshall world opinion against Russia so that the U.S. and possibly NATO, can continue to further their interests in that region.

These are terrifying times.  Russia has gladly taken the bait from the Bush administrations' new agreement with Poland and has reacted as though it was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In a bellicose statement, a Russian general , Anatoly Nogovitsyn , declared that Poland may face a Nuclear attack http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...  Again that is a Nuclear attack ..  

Of course this is a ridiculous over-reaction and Medveded has already walked it back somewhat, but it just goes to show how dramatically Bush and McCain's neocon agendas have threatened our immediate security.  

Is this why they do not seem to worry much about Climate change?

Just kidding, ... kind of.

Almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War we have come full circle.  We are now on the brink of something potentially worse:  A cold war that becomes Word War 3.  In their desire to always expand US influence the neocons have given Russia excuses to engage in ridiculous tough talk and extreme military reactions.

I like many around here have been known to scream out loud at my TeeVee, and throw things in the general direction of it whenever Patrick J. Buchanan starts giving his "analysis" and opinions concerning Barack Obama. No need to go into the particulars of that.

This morning however, that other side of Pat Buchanan, the side that get's reasonable people nodding their heads in agreement, comes out in an article he writes on the RCP Blog:
Blowback from Bear Baiting

More below the fold............

Some thoughts in the minor key about Georgia and Russia....

Hot chicks sometimes prefer intellectual writer types, but more often they go for the athletic go-getters.
Did McCamp miss the memo about hot chicks? Check this out. Hot chicks usually don't go out with political geeks, especially not the kind who are full of themselves and lie constantly. That lets me off the hook, because I am a novelist (sooo much cooler), but doesn't bode so well for McCain's campaign team.

Just to be fair, hot chicks probably do like B., a whole lot, but I am not jealous like McCain and company.  I'm considering running for president too, you know, just to inform the cougars out there I'm available (if you have a private jet). I would so like to have more homes than the McCrazy-Riches. Make my dream come true, and marry this blogger into your world of wealth. I prefer shaken, not stirred.

More after the flip

Up 'till now, every bit of the analysis of the South Ossetian conflict has assumed that Russia entered into the fighting as the result of careful thinking and careful timing.  It was timed to coincide with the Olympics.  It was a show of power, not just to the former Eastern Bloc, but to the US and NATO.  

The Russians were trying to reestablish the Soviet Union.   - John Bolton

The Russians are trying to reestablish the Russian Empire.   - John McCain

Surely it's the Russians whose minds we should be reading, because the Russians must have known what Georgia was going to do in South Ossetia, right?  

After watching Georgia get overrun by Russia while America wrings its hands must be very encouraging to other allies and potential allies.

We have a vague notion that the "inevitability" of democracy's spread throughout the world may be a false claim, but we don't know for sure, and don't know how to evaluate the idea.  So even Democrats hesitate to call the idea nonsense.

Frances Fitzgerald wrote "Fire in the Lake," published in 1972.  This book described the debacle that results when Americans try to insert American values and institutions into a society (Vietnam) that cannot accept them.

From outward appearances no member of Congress, no present or recent member of the administration (let's include Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and the State Department) and none of the Sunday morning interview hosts has ever read this book or any similar book.

For all the speeches, the photo-ops, the superior organization, and the surge in first-time voter registrations.... it's all starting to smell very familiar. And frankly, it scares me...

     Neo-conservatism blasted into the American political scene with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  However, its roots wind back through the U.S. political landscape to include Marxist social theory and the teachings of Renaissance philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli.  Many of the individuals whose names have become household words today were introduced on the world-wide political stage during the Reagan/G.H.W. Bush administration: Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, "Scooter" Libby, and others.  This essay bares the core of neoconservative belief, contrasts those beliefs to statements written by this nation’s founders, and highlights the political spin neocons use when quoting documents from America’s past.            

In today's NR Online (which I'd never have found without the kind consideration of a wingnut acquaintance of mine) every right winger's favorite classicist, Victor Davis Hansen, published "It’s America, Obama A modest dissent to the citizen of the world."

And yes, since Victor seems to be one of those tools used by the right to put a veneer of academia on their basest fears, it's worth looking at in detail.

Barack Obama scored major national security marks with his July 14 New York Times editorial "My Plan for Iraq" and his speech in Washington D.C. on July 15.  He deftly addressed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's insistence that the U.S. make deadline-centric plans to end its occupation of Iraq and outlined the core of the coherent foreign policy and national security strategy he'll pursue as president.

I'm not saying Obama parked one out on Waveland Avenue.  It's more like he safely bunted his way to first.  He has a long way to go, and I'm concerned whether it's humanly possible to graft sanity onto the foreign policy of a country in which, after nearly eight years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the neocons, John McCain is a credible candidate for the presidency.

The speaker is Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events. Human Events was reportedly Ronald Reagan's favorite newspaper, unquestionably conservative.
Babbin was also a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. According to him, the notion that we should stay in Iraq to build democracy there--is a lot of hooey!

The bad news is, he wants us to invade Iran.