Slaying Giants

I had heard that the increasingly pathetic John McCain had given a speech on the Senate floor talking about all the progress and the ponies to be found in Iraq, but I didn't know that he took on the greatest force in liberal politics today:

"I've seen this movie before from the liberal left in America, who share no responsibility for what happened in Cambodia when we said no," said McCain, whose campaign has lost support partly because of his advocacy of the war. He singled out Mike Gravel, a Vietnam War-era senator from Alaska who strongly opposed that mission and is waging a long-shot antiwar candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

Biden jumped in. "Give me a break! Quoting Gravel as the voice of the left?" he exclaimed.

When the only person you can manage to pick on is Mike Gravel, you're, in a word, irrelevant.

By the way, Gravel released a statement in response:



Incidentally, what McCain is babbling about with regard to Cambodia is that the Senate cut off funds for troops there in 1970... because, you know, we weren't at war with Cambodia at the time. Also, we ended up bombing the crap out of them the next year. And we installed a puppet government led by Prince Lon Nol in 1970, one that proved completely unpopular and led to the Khmer Rouge's rise. In other words, it was our meddling in foreign affairs that CAUSED the Cambodian genocide, not our isolation. And who ended up invading Cambodia and stopping the violence? COMMUNIST VIETNAM.

This is a familiar right-wing lament, that our leaving Vietnam caused millions of dead. It's the stabbed-in-the-back routine. I'm completely unsurprised that John "What you gonna do about it, Mike Gravel" McCain is employing it. Pathetic.