While Bill Kristol, in a September 29 New York Times Op-Ed, compliments John McCain for being impetuous—and encourages him to continue being so—Nicholas Kristof has a different take in a recent New York Times Op-Ed.
As a former military, formerly fond of acronyms, Kristof’s use of the term “impish cubed” for “impulsive, impetuous and impatient” caught my attention. I would have used “I³” as in “C³I” ( “C-cubed-I” for Command Control Communications and Intelligence). However, when referring to McCain’s qualities—Impulsive, Impetuous, and Impatient—“impish cubed” sounds much more appropriate.
But I am digressing. As I wrote in “Bill Kristol’s Advice to John McCain: Continue to Play the “Impetuosity” Card,” Kristol praises McCain’s “impetuous decision to return to Washington” to help save our economy. According to Kristol:
The agreement announced early Sunday morning is better than Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s original proposal, and better than the deal the Democrats claimed was close on Thursday. Assuming the legislation passes soon, and assuming it reassures financial markets, McCain will be able to take some credit.
(Wow, talking about having egg on one’s face)
On the other hand, Kristof in his excellent and timely September 27 Op-Ed discusses how McCain has “in recent years…become impish cubed — impulsive, impetuous and impatient” and how “those are perilous qualities in a commander in chief.”
Some examples, according to Kristof:
While Mr. Bush has been forced to accept more sensible policies in his second term, Mr. McCain has become steadily more of a neocon in the cowboy role that Mr. Bush played in his first term, prone to solving problems with stealth bombers rather than United Nations resolutions.
Judging from Mr. McCain’s own positions, he might well revive a cold war with Russia and could start a hot war with Iran or North Korea. In those three hot spots, Mr. McCain could constitute a dangerous gamble for this country.
Kristof continues to cite specific reasons for his concern with I-cubed McCain.
On Iran and its uranium enrichment program:
…Mr. Bush, under the influence of Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice, has realized that the best hope is diplomacy and negotiation. In contrast, Mr. McCain denounces Barack Obama’s call for direct talks with Iranian leaders and speaks openly about the possibility of bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
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So if Iran continues its policies as most expect, we might well find ourselves under a McCain presidency headed toward our third war with a Muslim country. The result would be an Iranian nationalist backlash that would cement ayatollahs in place, as well as $200-a-barrel oil, open season on Americans in Iraq, and global fury at American unilateralism.
On North Korea:
North Korea is one of the Bush administration’s greatest failures, and Mr. McCain seems intent on making it worse…
Even President Bush recognized the failure of his first term’s hard-line policy and abandoned it, instead pursuing negotiations and diplomatic solutions with North Korea. Mr. McCain fumes that this is accommodation and seems to prefer the first-term fist-waving that was emotionally satisfying but failed catastrophically.
A McCain administration would thus apparently mean no more diplomatic track with North Korea. The upshot would be North Korea’s restarting its nuclear weapon assembly line. In similar circumstances in 1994, Mr. McCain raised the prospect of military strikes on North Korea and suggested that war might be inevitable (instead, President Clinton stopped plutonium production with a negotiated deal).
And on Russia:
Russia underscores Mr. McCain’s penchant for risk-taking, theatrics and fulmination. Most striking, he wants to kick Russia out of the Group of 8.
Mr. McCain’s lead-with-the-chin approach to Russia reflects the same pugnacity that resulted in obscenity-laced dust-ups with fellow Republican senators, but it’s less endearing when the risk is nuclear war. Do we really want to risk an exchange of nuclear warheads over Abkhazia or South Ossetia? The Spanish prime minister, José Zapatero, told me a few days ago that what he fears most under a McCain administration is a revival of the cold war with Russia.
Why is McCain’s “I-Cubedness” so disturbing and dangerous?
Perhaps Kristof’s opening paragraph says it all:
Suppose John McCain had been in the White House in October 1962, facing one of the great tests of the modern presidency. If so, we might remember that period not as “the Cuban missile crisis” but as “World War III.”
Sticking with acronyms, would that be WW³?
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.