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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, is a leading advocate in the U.S. Senate for aggressive foreign policies, including an interventionist “war on terror.” A founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a neoconservative-led letterhead group that emerged after the 9/11 attacks to promote attacking Iraq, McCain consistently backed the George W. Bush administration’s efforts to expand the “war on terror” in the Middle East, including championing the “surge” in Iraq and advocating attacking Iran over its uranium enrichment program.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain touted his foreign policy credentials as proof that he would be a better commander and chief than his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). His support for get-tough policies, however, ran up against growing public discontent with the Iraq War, his association with an unpopular sitting president, and concerns that he was weak on the economy. Obama frequently cited McCain’s hawkish tendencies as a sign that McCain was out of touch. For example, during the candidates’ second debate in October 2008, Obama responded to McCain’s charge that he was too inexperienced on foreign affairs, saying, “Senator McCain suggests that … he's somber and responsible.… [T]his is the guy who sang, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,’ who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don't think is an example of ‘speaking softly.’ This is the person who, after we had—we hadn't even finished Afghanistan, where he said, ‘Next up, Baghdad.’"1

Shortly after his February 2007 announcement on the Late Show with David Letterman that he would run in the 2008 elections,2 McCain helped set the tone of his candidacy during a visit to Iraq in April 2007. After taking what the Washington Post described as a "heavily guarded walk through a newly fortified Baghdad market," McCain gushed about the progress in Iraq since the president's "surge" strategy began to be implemented earlier in the year. "Never have I been able to drive from the airport, never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today," McCain said. "But I am not saying 'Mission Accomplished.'... It's a very difficult task ahead of us.”3

McCain’s claims about the improved security situation unraveled somewhat when, the next day, a reporter interviewed vendors in the market McCain visited. Said one shopkeeper, "The security procedures were abnormal!" He added: "They paralyzed the market when they came. This was only for the media. This will not change anything." Describing security at the market, the New York Times reported: "The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees—the equivalent of an entire company—and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hour long visit.”4

Although he is sometimes characterized as a moderate, in recent years McCain has repeatedly joined up with militarist factions in U.S. politics, like the neoconservatives. After returning from a January 2007 trip to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), McCain and Lieberman presented their opinions on Iraq to an audience at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington, D.C.-based think tank that serves as home for many leading neoconservative writers. Emphasizing his belief that the Iraq War was still "winnable," McCain laid out his argument for a troop surge: "The presence of additional coalition forces would give the Iraqi government the ability to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own—impose its rule throughout the country. In bringing security to Iraq and chiefly to Baghdad, our forces would give the government a fighting chance to pursue reconciliation."5 This plan was echoed by that proposed by AEI scholar Frederick Kagan and Gen. Jack Keane—unveiled at the same AEI event at which McCain and Lieberman spoke.6

Earlier, in 2002, McCain played a role in supporting a White House-orchestrated campaign to build public and congressional support for the invasion of Iraq when he served as an honorary co-chair of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, founded in late 2002 by Bruce Jackson of the now-defunct Project for the New American Century.7 While most of the committee members were neoconservatives and Republican Party hawks like McCain, several hardline Democrats also supported the group, including Lieberman and former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NB). The group's executive director was Randy Scheunemann, a lobbyist who while on the staff of then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), wrote the Iraq Liberation Act, which authorized $98 million for the Iraqi National Congress and served as a key stepping-stone on the path to the Iraq War.8 Scheuenmann went on to become McCain’s top foreign policy advisor during the 2008 presidential race.

According to CLI's mission statement, "The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was formed to promote regional peace, political freedom, and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations." In addition to its "educational and advocacy efforts" for regime change in Iraq, the committee pledged that it was "committed to work beyond the liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy and the establishment of political pluralism, democratic institutions, and the rule of law." Shortly after the 2003 invasion—what it termed the "successful liberation of Iraq"—the committee ceased operations, failing to fulfill the promises of its mission statement.9

McCain promotes an Israel-centric vision of Mideast peace, often echoing neoconservative rhetoric equating U.S. security with that of Israel. Speaking at a 2001 conference of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), McCain said: "In addition to her moral commitment to Israel's security, America must provide Israel with whatever military equipment and technology she requires to defend herself, above and beyond what we supply today if necessary. Our support for Israel must intensify, as threats to Israeli security have intensified."10 In a speech to the American Jewish Committee in 2002, McCain said, "I think the Israeli people would agree that we can't wait for rogue regimes like Iran, Iraq, and Syria to develop the weapons that would seriously challenge Israel's defenses, and our own. I think Israelis would agree that a posture of robust deterrence is no longer enough in this age of weapons of mass destruction."11

Similarly, during the Israel-Lebanon conflict in summer 2006, McCain rejected mounting criticism of Israel for its response to the Hezbollah kidnappings. "What would we do if somebody came across our borders and killed our soldiers and captured our soldiers?" asked McCain. "Do you think we would be exercising total restraint?"12

Despite sharing a number of common policy objectives with neoconservatives and other hawks, McCain has promoted negotiated compromises in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a May 2006 interview with Haaretz, an influential Israeli daily, McCain said that he favored Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations led by realists like Brent Scowcroft or Jim Baker; he also nodded his assent in response to the question: "In general, a movement toward the June 4, 1967 armistice lines, with minor modifications?"13 Writing in the New Republic, John Judis commented that the interview—which McCain disputed after an upsurge of Israeli criticism—indicated that McCain might be "closer to George H.W. Bush than to George W. Bush. And that's not a bad thing at all."14

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Scheunemann, who advised McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign as well as his failed 2000 presidential bid, argued that despite a number of “realists,” such as Scowcroft, among McCain’s foreign policy advisors, his own influence and that of other like-minded advisors like William Kristol and Robert Kagan was paramount in McCain’s thinking. "I don't think, given where John has been for the last four or five years on the Iraq War and foreign policy issues, anyone would mistake Scowcroft for a close adviser," Scheunemann said, adding that even if Scowcroft were close, McCain "was not taking the advice.”15

Outside observers have noted the impact of Scheunemann and other hawks on McCain’s policy preferences. According to John Judis, it was during the 2000 presidential campaign that the influence of hardliners began to take root. Judis writes that McCain began "seeking to differentiate his views from those of other Republican presidential aspirants and from the growing isolationism of House Republicans ... [placing] his new interventionist instincts within a larger ideological framework. That ideological framework was neoconservatism. McCain began reading the Weekly Standard and conferring with its editors, particularly Bill Kristol." Shortly after his staff consulted with Kristol, McCain hired a bevy of neoconservative-aligned operatives, including Scheunemann, Marshall Wittmann, and Daniel McKivergan.16

The impact of this group of advisors on the senator's thinking was revealed in early 1999, according to Judis, when McCain spoke at Kansas State University using a speech Scheunemann helped draft. In it, McCain echoed the neoconservative idea of "national greatness conservatism," arguing: "The United States is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history.... [W]e have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity's benefit." Judis reported about the stumping, "The centerpiece of the speech was a strategy that McCain called 'rogue-state rollback,'" a term Scheunemann claimed to have coined based on rhetoric used by critics of 1950s Cold War containment strategy.17

McCain has served since 1992 as the chairman of the International Republican Institute, a program of the Republican Party that was created in 1983 as a channel for funding from the then-newly created National Endowment for Democracy. Since its early years of work supporting U.S. partners in Central America and the Caribbean, the IRI has gained a reputation as a surrogate for interventionist U.S. foreign policy. IRI has offices around the world, and currently funds nongovernmental organizations in 50 countries. During the Bush administration, the IRI was a leading U.S. actor in supporting individuals and organizations that sought to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti (successfully in February 2004) and President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (unsuccessfully in April 2002).18