Sen. McCain on the Wildfires; Libya; Afghanistan; and Imus's Fickle Nature

Reports over the weekend indicated that Arizona Senator John McCain, on a visit to the site of one of Arizona’s raging wildfires, blamed illegal immigrants for starting the ferocious infernos. Seeking clarity, and knowing well the media’s tendency to misconstrue, Imus asked McCain, a Republican, what he actually said and what he actually meant.
 
“I said…according go the forest service and other information, including published reports, that some fires are caused by people crossing the border illegally,” McCain said. He had not stated that illegal immigrants caused these particular fires.
 
The kinds of flames sometimes ignited by illegal immigrants, he explained, are normally warming and cooking fires or signal fires, and he was surprised that anybody would be surprised by this fact. “People have been doing this for some period of time,” he noted.
 
Then, attempting to redeem himself from last hour’s shortcoming, Imus tried—and succeeded—in properly pronouncing the word “isolationist,” when asking McCain if he believes the current Republican contenders for president in 2012 have adopted such an approach to United States foreign policy.
 
“Isolationism ran through the entire debate,” McCain said, referring to last week’s Republican primary debate in New Hampshire. He was particularly unnerved by comments calling for the U.S. to withdraw from Libya, where he said Qaddafi was on the brink of massacring the entire city of Benghazi until the U.S. and its NATO allies intervened.
 
“We brought our air power in and stopped what would have been another Srebrenica,” he said, referring to the 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Muslims during the Bosnian War. “It would have been a slaughter of thousands of innocent people. Our interests are our values, and to say that we should’ve just not taken an action…that’s isolationism, my friend.”
 
He believes strongly that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi will eventually go, and chastised President Obama for “leading from behind,” and thus delaying Qaddafi’s departure. “He would’ve gone a long time ago if we’d have done the right thing and not just declared a no-fly zone when the rebels were on their way to Tripoli, but used American air power,” McCain said.
 
The notion that the U.S. needs to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately also disturbs him, he told Imus, because he sees real progress being made there. “I think it will become like Iraq,” he said. “It will have sort of a functioning democracy, far better than what it had before.”
 
Not that the standard in Afghanistan was terribly high; after all, this is a country that, under Taliban rule, hung women from the goal posts of Kabul’s soccer stadium for showing their ankles in public. McCain rejected Imus’s assertion that his support of the U.S. “adventures” in Libya and Afghanistan is more humanitarian than nationalistic, saying again, “Our values are our interests.”
 
“It is not in our interests to see radical Islamic elements gain control of Afghanistan,” he said. “We abandoned Afghanistan one time after the Russians were driven out. That led to the Taliban taking over, which led to Al-Qaeda.”
 
Unlike Imus, McCain was unwilling to name a favorite among the dozen or so characters vying for the 2012 presidential nomination. He was, however, very willing to chastise the I-Man’s support (for now) of Mitt Romney.
 
“If I were Mitt Romney, I would not count on it being permanent,” McCain said. “Having known you to jump on and off my various campaigns at least 27 times.”
 
-Julie Kanfer