https://socialistaction.org/2018/08/27/john-mccain-reactionary-to-the-end/
John McCain: A reactionary bigot to the end
/ 22 hours ago
U.S. Senator John McCain leaves after a meeting with Tunisia's Prime
Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi in Tunis
By STEVE XAVIER
John McCain, the right-wing U.S. Senator, and war criminal, from
Arizona, has died after a struggle with brain cancer. More recently,
McCain has been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump’s presidency on
certain aspects of policy.
Predictably, liberals and social democrats have joined with
conservatives and centrists to heap praise on McCain for his “humanity,
decency, and courage.” The Democratic “socialist” congressional
candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised his “human decency,” and
Bernie Sanders extolled his “decency and humanity.” This praise is
misplaced.
A Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, McCain was shot down during a
bombing mission and held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi for 5 and a half
years. He entered politics, running for the House of Representatives in
1982, where he was a supporter of the reactionary foreign and domestic
policies of the Reagan administration.
McCain’s record was thoroughly reactionary to the end. He voted for the
Trump tax cut for the rich and was a consistent supporter of every U.S.
imperialist war and aggression overseas—from Cuba and Nicaragua to Iran,
Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq. He famously sang “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb,
bomb Iran” during an event. He was a defender of Israel’s violent
attacks on the Palestinian people and opposed any notion of a
Palestinian state. He called for a U.S. attack on Syria in 2013 and was
a vocal supporter of the Saudi-led slaughter in Yemen.
McCain expressed his hatred of “gooks,” a racist term for Asian people.
When challenged for this slur, he showed no regret and said he would
continue to call his former captors that word.
McCain supported Central American death-squad regimes in the 1980s and
the murderous Contra war against the Nicaraguan Revolution, including a
personal contribution to a Contra terrorist group. He was a board member
of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, the U.S. branch of the World
Anti-Communist League, which was linked to Iran-Contra money transfers
and death-squad activity in Central and South America.
He voted against the Martin Luther King holiday. He also opposed
sanctions against the South African apartheid regime. He never met a
budget cut he didn’t like that attacked poor and working people. He
supported privatization of Social Security, a move that would be
disastrous for older workers.
McCain played a role in the sale of mining rights, on indigenous Apache
land in Arizona, to copper mining interests. This was made possible by a
provision added to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
with McCain’s collusion.
The games people play
Capitalist politicians, both right or “left,” play a game that exists to
preserve the power and privilege of the few. It’s the rules of this game
that allow the various players to praise McCain “despite our
differences.” We hear no mention of his racism, service to big business,
or warmongering. It was Trump’s violation of these rules, by mocking
McCain’s war record, that helped liberals embrace McCain’s “maverick”
status.
The rules set limits within which the bourgeois politician operates;
ignore them and you become the object of scorn. One day, it’s likely
that some rightist GOP politicians will talk about how they “respected”
Bernie Sanders “despite our differences.”
Working people have no stake in the game played by both parties of
bourgeois politics. Instead, the working class and oppressed need a
party of their own, a party that fights daily in the interests of all of
the victims of this system. In the end, what is at stake is not
“differences” between factions of ruling class politicians.
What is at stake is the future of humanity and the planet. To fight for
a better world, we need a new politics, not participation in the
political games of our class enemies. The genteel standards of bourgeois
politics don’t apply to fighters for socialism.
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August 27, 2018 in Trump / U.S. Government.
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