Sen. You-Know-Who bowing down before the brutaL Libyan dictator after the dictator killed everyone including mostly Americans on Pan Am Flight 103. The list of brutal dictators that American Presidents have shaken hands with is long–McCain and many more conservative leaders cozied up to Saddam for years after he was known to have gassed his own people.
Sen. John McCain compares President Obama shaking hands with Cuban President Raul Castro with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shaking hands with Hitler in what is widely viewed as Chamberlain’s disastrous appeasement to Hitler.
“It gives Raul some propaganda to continue to prop up his dictatorial, brutal regime,” McCain said. “Why should you shake hands with somebody who’s keeping Americans in prison?”
Here’s why: Because shaking hands with world leaders, even enemies, at a funeral, means nothing but a handshake in passing at a world event where everybody is shaking hands. And Sen. McCain knows it.
Having a meeting for government business with the then-Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, and shaking hands with him, complete with bowing–after Qaddafi shot down a Pan Am flight with Americans aboard–might be construed as more than just a handshake in passing. And Sen. McCain, who also has shaken hands in friendly meetings with the likes of Saddam Hussein (when Saddam was our great “friend” and oil daddy) did just that–angered the families of Pan Am victims’ survivors. (See here for a summation of Lybia’s role.)
I remember how angered some of those families of Pan Am victims were at McCain and other American conservatives who were pals of Qaddafi back in the day, because I interviewed some of them in my journalism days for an article.
I tried to interview McCain for the story, but he passed me off to a flak who gave me the usual spin that only made the Pan Am victims’ families angrier.
They wanted Qaddafi brought to justice for Pan Am and brought a lot of pressure to bear on McCain and others; but McCain and other politicians wanted to do business with Libya’s bad boy because he was useful to them and “American interests” at the time.
There’s so much to admire about John McCain and his life and incredible service and love of America. But he can also disgust with his hyperbole and hypocrisy in pandering to the far-right lunatics who stay awake at night trying to make the President out to be evil incarnate.
There’s been so much press this year about Obama and McCain becoming good friends and frequent political allies that he seems McCain says stuff like this on occasion to get Obama haters off his back.
Or maybe the bitter taste of losing to Obama stirs him to such hypocritical rhetoric.
Whatever drives the great Senator’s occasional madness is a mystery.
But come on, Senator “Maverick”; keep it real.
