Senator John McCain: The Heart and Voice of a Lion on the War in Iraq

When one thinks of Senator John McCain, one mainly thinks of lost opportunities. Too many missteps have turned what would have been a stellar political career into something of a disappointment. But when it comes to the War on Terror, especially the War in Iraq, John McCain has had the heart and the voice of a lion.

When the smoke of Ground Zero in New York had not yet cleared, it was his voice in the Senate that spoke best for what had to be done. He said that God may have mercy on those who had done the 9/11 attack, but we would not.

It is of course easy to rally a reeling nation to arms when the nation is angry and eager to spring to arms. It is a lot harder to do so when the same nation, years later, has grown weary of the fight. But even when the polls numbers have turned sour and the Copperhead Caucus in the Congress has grown, Senator McCain has neither failed not flagged.

There was no better illustration of McCain's eloquence than during Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's absurd and pathetic all night debate. As other Senators stood up one after the other to drone speeches that were truly sleep inducing, when Senator McCain took the floor, he thundered like someone from the Old Testament.

"The outcome of this debate, the vote we are about to take, has never been in doubt to a single member of this body. And to state the obvious, nothing we have done for the last twenty-four hours will have changed any facts on the ground in Iraq or made the outcome of the war any more or less important to the security of our country. The stakes in this war remain as high today as they were yesterday; the consequences of an American defeat are just as grave; the costs of success just as dear. No battle will have been won or lost, no enemy will have been captured or killed, no ground will have been taken or surrendered, no soldier will have survived or been wounded, died or come home because we spent an entire night delivering our poll-tested message points, spinning our soundbites, arguing with each other, and substituting our amateur theatrics for statesmanship. All we have achieved are remarkably similar newspaper accounts of our inflated sense of the drama of this display and our own temporary physical fatigue. Tomorrow the press will move on to other things and we will be better rested. But nothing else will have changed."

The attempt by the Copperhead Caucus, mostly made of Senate Democrats, but with a handful of wobbly Republicans as well, to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory failed-for now. Still one cannot help but think that if the Copperhead Caucus can be held off long enough of the campaign of General Petraeus to succeed, John McCain will be the chief among those who will be responsible.

John McCain has stumbled quite a bit. McCain-Feingold remains an assault on free speech and a travesty. McCain has been soft on taxes, not willing to lower them when it is demonstrable that in so doing economic growth is secured. He was on the wrong side of the immigration issue. And he has a temper that is sometimes ungovernable.

Absent these things, we might be hailing President John McCain. But his last national campaign is faltering, bereft of money, with staff leaving as if from a sinking ship, with all of punditry predicting its demise. Characteristically, John McCain has refused to recognized defeat and will fight on-for now.

Still, in the central crisis of our times, Senator John McCain shows true greatness. He is Themistocles. He is Churchill. He is Ronald Reagan. And for that he deserves to be remembered with honor and gratitude.