Stanford, Calif. – Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, in the midst of a California tour, Tuesday criticized the handling of the Iraq war and outlined a foreign-policy plan to create a “league of democracies” that would “act where the U.N. fails to act.”
In what was billed as a major policy speech at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, McCain described a league that would work to relieve suffering in places such as Darfur, fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa and seek global solutions to the environmental crisis.
“Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom, knowledge and resources necessary to succeed,” he said.
McCain, who was once the clear front-runner and is now trailing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the polls and in fundraising, is clearly distancing himself from President Bush’s handling of the war, while still supporting the troop increase.
“That tension of supporting the war in Iraq, but wanting to find some distance from the president may be behind some of his recent speeches,” said Bruce Cain, director of the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of Bush declaring major combat operations finished in Iraq, and McCain took the opportunity to declare otherwise.
“I’m not telling you it’s mission accomplished,” he told reporters after his speech, but Bush’s troop-increase strategy “should be given an opportunity to succeed.”
He was also quick to call Donald Rumsfeld “one of the worst secretaries of Defense.”
In his speech, he criticized the handling of the war, saying “we must never again launch a military operation with too few troops to complete the mission and build a secure, stable and democratic peace. When we fight a war, we must fight to win.”
The concept of a League of Nations harks back to the days of the failed one started by President Woodrow Wilson, but McCain sees his league of democracies as “the core of an international order of peace based on freedom.”
