Redstate

By Derannimer Posted in 2008 — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Ok, so I don't know if everyone's seen this yet, but the Huffington Post has a blog promoting an interview McCain gave to one James Rubin, shortly following the Palestinian elections back in 2006, in which, so Rubin reports, McCain said he would consider talking to Hamas (h/t HotAir). Here's the HuffPo blog:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/15/exclusive-video-mccain-wa_n_102...

And here, for those who don't wish to follow the link, is the relevant quotage:

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RUBIN: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

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HuffPo obviously thinks this is teh damning: the blog is entitled "McCain Was For Talking to Hamas Before He Was Against It." And indeed, at first sight this would seem troubling evidence of hypocrisy, inconsistency, or just plain foolishness.

But the story immediately struck me as odd, for a simple reason.

If there's one thing we can all agree on, I think, it's that John McCain is Mr Morning Talk Show Guy. He's one of the cable news networks' preferred go-to guys, particularly on foreign policy issues, and it seemed extraordinarily unlikely that, if Mac had taken such a view, it wasn't widely known at the time. So why don't we all remember McCain's bizarre Hamas squishiness? Was Mr Rubin of Sky News the only journalist who heard from McCain following the momentous Hamas take-over? Or, if you prefer a more sinister explanation, did McCain give a different opinion in other venues?

Well, no and no. I checked this out on the Google news archives — which took about fifteen minutes, incidentally — and discovered McCain had indeed addressed the topic in other venues at greater length, and had expressed a view not incompatible with the above quotation.

So we're back to bizarre squishiness, then? Well, no again.

Here's McCain being interviewed on CNN's Saturday Morning News, January 28th, 2006, by their anchor Betty Nguyen:

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NGUYEN: … All right, let's shift over to the global front. The Bush administration is reviewing all aspects of U.S. aid to the Palestinians now that Hamas has won the elections.… What does this do to the U.S. relationship with the Palestinians?

MCCAIN: Well, hopefully, Hamas now that they are going to govern, will be motivated to renounce this commitment to the extinction of the state of Israel. Then we can do business again, we can resume aid, we can resume the peace process.

It's very, very important, though, that they renounce this commitment and I understand that maybe in some parts of their party it's difficult, but we can't have a situation in the Middle East where a governing nation or an organization that's governed by a group of people who are committed to the extinction of its neighbor. It's an untenable position.

NGUYEN: Does this throw a huge kink in the road map to peace?

MCCAIN: No, let's hope that they understand there's a difference between the revolutions and governing. Other entities have in the past. I think it's very relevant and an important point that we are told that the major reason why Hamas was elected was not because of the issue of Israel, as it was total dissatisfaction with the previous government which had not given them anything but corruption and economic stagnation.… I think this is a situation in the area of the world that I hope can be resolved, and over time we can move the peace process forward. At least I hope so, but we'll have to wait and see.

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/28/smn.03.html

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So basically, he said that he'd be in favour of talking to Hamas — if Hamas "renounced" its anti-Israel ways first.

Well, duh. If the bad guys stop being bad guys I'm all for talking to them too.

These statements on CNN are pretty easily reconciled, I think, with the Rubin quote; and in that context, the latter isn't really disturbing. And, of course, it's entirely possible that there was a similar context in the Rubin interview itself. Since neither Rubin nor HuffPo provide anything of the interview beyond this snippet, however, it's difficult to say.

As I see it, Rubin seems to have simply quoted McCain out of context to make it appear he'd said something more incriminating than he actually had. McCain's full views, as expressed in the CNN interview, seem to have been something like this: Hamas wasn't elected simply for being an anti-Israel terrorist organisation, since they do some political stuff too; if they just do the political stuff, and drop the terrorism and the anti-Israel sentiment, we can talk to them; I hope they will but I'm none too certain ("we'll have to wait and see"). Rubin edited this to make it seem that McCain simply said: "we can talk to them."

This whole business says more about James Rubin (and HuffPo, but you already knew that) than it does about McCain. The only thing I'd really fault Mac for here is maybe over-optimism, in even suggesting that a Hamas reformation was possible. But, again, "At least I hope so, but we'll have to wait and see," is not exactly a ringing statement of confidence.

And even if he ever was optimistic, he pretty quickly stopped. Here's McCain later in 2006 (July 16th), as reported in the St-Louis Post Dispatch (via the Weekly Standard's blog):

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U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave strong support on Saturday to Israel's reaction to the capture of two of its soldiers, despite international criticism that the country's offensive against Islamic militants in Lebanon has been too harsh.

At a political fundraiser for Illinois state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois, McCain delivered gave a scathing condemnation of the Hezbollah guerrillas who made an incursion into Israel on Wednesday, seizing two soldiers and killing eight. In response, Israel began a massive bombing campaign of Lebanon's infrastructure.

"You have probably seen our European friends say, well, the Israelis have got to stop," said McCain, who was a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War.

"What would we do if somebody came across our borders and killed our soldiers and captured our soldiers? Do you think we would be exercising total restraint?"

The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah -- a conflagration that on Saturday threatened to develop into a regional war -- was only part of McCain's wide-ranging speech on foreign affairs.

McCain specifically called on Iran to stop its assistance of Hezbollah, which is also a declared political party in Lebanon's government. The group is also supported by Syria.

"Israel has neighbors on its borders that are bent on its extinction," McCain said. "This crisis is not going to be defused until Hezbollah is disarmed and Iran discontinues its sponsorship of Hezbollah."

… McCain also denounced Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that controls the Palestinian Authority. Militants linked to Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier on June 25. That abduction resulted in an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2006/07/mccain_strongly_back...

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So, to summarise: McCain believed, early in 2006, that we could possibly talk to Hamas if they first renounced anti-Israel violence. But he never seems to have been anything like convinced that this was probable. And a few months later (if not before that, 'cause again, I didn't conduct an exhaustive survey here), having observed their behaviour hadn't changed, he concluded that yeah, that wasn't going to happen, and lumped them together with Hezbollah, where they belong. Obama believes, two years later, that we should talk to Hamas' sponsor right now, and they don't have to do anything first. And not only that "we" should talk, but the President himself. Rubin says these two positions are the same, and that therefore McCain is being hypocritical when he condemns Obama's Iran talk, or brings up Hamas' kind words for Obama. I'm not buying it.

But then, I'm one of the apparently few people on this site who genuinely loves John McCain, so, I dunno, maybe I'm just giving him a pass. Thoughts?

(In particular, does anyone recollect great wails of anguished betrayal from Bill Kristol and Commentary that Mac was unduly soft on Hamas? Because if he had been, I think there would have been wailing.)