The first crisis over North Korea's nuclear program arose in late 1994. It was obvious there was not much the United States could do to step in unilaterally and disarm the North Korean regime. Sanctions, the normally inevitable option short of war, had no meaning — the United States had no trade with the North in the first place and the regime followed a policy of economic autarky (Juche) in any case. There was really only one feasible course of action: gather as many regional allies as possible, agree to a process of inducing North Korea to freeze its nuclear program, and tender an offer to the North Koreans on the basis of a quid pro quo.

Only one politician of any political standing dissented. His name was John Sidney McCain III. His modest proposal was that the United States should be prepared to bomb the North Korean reactor sites. Never mind that he could be condemning several thousand U.S. troops (and tens of thousands of South Korean civilians) in the vicinity of the Demilitarized Zone to a virtual death sentence. It had never occurred to this self-proclaimed military expert that the North Korean regime had amassed thousands of long-range artillery pieces and rocket launchers and concealed them in tunnels north of the DMZ. From these positions the North Korean military could unleash an avalanche of fire south of the border. The result would probably have been a repeat of the Korean war of 1950-53 but with even more murderously lethal weapons.

Fast forward to 1999 and the Clinton administration's great crusade in the Balkans (carefully calculated to target a weak and isolated country — Clinton was no fool). Humanitarian intervention was all the rage but it had to be designed to minimize the exposure of U.S. troops; after all, with no conceivable vital U.S. interest at stake, the public would not contemplate the spilling of American blood without an attendant drop in Clinton's all-important poll numbers.

Some politicians were actually able to set aside their reflexive jingoism and smell the scent of wag-the-dog in the sanctimonious statements of Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Richard Holbrooke. The vote on an authorization of the use of force against Serbia failed in the House on a tie vote of 215-215 — the only time the equivalent of a war declaration failed in either house in U.S. history.

In the other chamber John McCain was also critical of the administration's Balkan policy. Only for him it wasn't bellicose enough. Rather than limiting it to a bombing campaign he introduced a joint resolution to authorize the introduction of ground troops into a full-scale war with Serbia — something the Clinton administration did not even ask for. Fortunately, in a rare show of good sense, the Senate tabled the McCain resolution by a vote of 78-22.

McCain's unbridled, almost manic, bellicosity with respect to the quagmire in Iraq is too well known to require elaboration. But the sophistication of his military strategy with respect to that country can be inferred from his remarks to a group of bikers in Sturgis, SD: "We'll win it the right way, and that's by winning it!"

Apparently, though, McCain's neoconservative handlers have already grown tired of the generational struggle against "Islamofascism" (not to mention their long-planned intention to bomb Iran), for they are already pivoting McCain into a stance of maximal belligerence against Russia.

Much has been made about McCain's relationship with his principal foreign policy handler, Randy Scheunemann, heretofore a paid lobbyist of the Republic of Georgia and who still benefits financially from part ownership of the lobbying firm that continues to service the Georgia account. This is clearly a conflict of interest and indicates the corruption that is endemic to political campaigns of both parties. But to try to explain McCain's actions in this way is to misunderstand the man.

Scheunemann is merely a toad overstuffed by one too many lunches at the Capitol Grill, in sum, a typical Washington success story. But McCain is sui generis. If Scheunemann had never existed someone else would be writing precisely the same talking points for the presumptive Republican candidate. McCain's love of war and diplomatic brinkmanship is nothing if not sincere. Perhaps it is the only sincere thing about the man.

Democrats are finally stumbling onto the fact, although the press has yet to discover it, that McCain is a serial flip-flopper and prevaricator. Across virtually the entire spectrum of domestic policy McCain has held one position and then jumped to the polar opposite, apparently without noticing the inconsistency (and his pals on the press bus are too polite to bring it up):

• A recipient of cash and favors from savings and loan fraudster Charles Keating, McCain reminted himself as the Conscience of the Senate, to the hosannas of an adoring and amnesiac press;
• McCain could not in good conscience support tax cuts that disproportionately favored the rich — until he began to sniff the incense of a Republican presidential coronation ceremony;
• He was against offshore oil drilling before he was for it;
• Wearing the garb of the Serious Centrist (a mythical species that David Broder venerates), McCain railed against "agents of intolerance" like Jerry Falwell, but crawled to Canossa when Republican base-pandering mandated that he must give a cringing speech at Falwell's Liberty University;
• Even on his signature issue of torture McCain postured as an implacable foe of the Bush policy right up until the primary season commenced. Since then he has voted "no" on measures that would ban torture or confine CIA interrogation techniques to those permitted by the U.S. Army Field Manual.

And so on. McCain's hypocrisy is perhaps somewhat more egregious than the practices of the average politician, but not markedly so. After all, politicians do not have principles, they have positions. No doubt the Democrats will make heavy weather of these flip-flops, as they are clearly entitled to. But in so doing they miss the central point about John McCain.

All these flip-flops illustrate McCain's near-total lack of sincerity: he doesn't really care about the issues at all. In practice he changes positions so easily because the positions themselves are throw-aways. He is required to have them for political purposes but they mostly bore and annoy him.

There is only one thing he cares about and that is building an altar to Mars. War is the one fixed star in the McCain universe. You will find no flip-flopping or prevaricating there.

While McCain admits he doesn't understand the economy (and then denies that he doesn't), he claims unlimited expertise in national security matters. His belligerent megalomania with respect to the Georgian crisis has now, finally, even earned him a mild reproof from the neocon-friendly Washington Post: "Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for President." [1]

In a development little reported in the U.S., Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili "claimed that Georgia's ports and airports would be placed under US military protection, a suggestion quickly denied by the Pentagon." [2] Assuming that the Department of Defense is telling the truth (and granted that it is difficult to determine whether the Pentagon or Saakashvili is more prone to fabrication), then where did the Georgian President get his information that the United States would be militarily intervening? Given that McCain claims to talk to Saakashvili every day, and given a string of grandiose pronouncements by McCain and his handlers regarding Georgia, is it possible that he misled Saakashvili, either deliberately or by implication, to believe that U.S. military intervention would be forthcoming?

It is still unclear whether McCain promised Saakashvili anything, or whether it was simply the Georgian President's own delusion that he was the apple of Washington's eye, but McCain's buttinski tactics would already have been a major scandal if any other American politician who was not the sitting President had made such inflammatory pronouncements on foreign policy. As it is, McCain is already, in his campaign ukases, dramatically downgrading relations with Russia in a manner that suggests he thinks he is President. [3]

The public is inclined to believe the worst of a politician when he is insincere, inconsistent, or dishonest; indeed, such personality traits are virtually what makes the typical politician as we know him today. But such creatures are merely nuisances, like mosquitoes. The really dangerous politician is one with an idée fixe, and when that obsession centers on the desirability of perpetual war the possibility of catastrophe is all too real.

Given who he is, what makes him tick, and the potential that he might actually realize his ambitions on the world stage, John McCain is the most dangerous man in America.

* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.

[1] "McCain's Focus on Georgia Raises Questions of Propriety," The Washington Post, August 15, 2008, p A12.

[2] "Russia challenges George Bush as it advances through Georgia," The Telegraph [UK], August 14, 2008.

[3] "McCain Warns of a 'Dramatically Different Relationship' With Russia in the Wake of Its Invasion of Georgia," Kenneth T. Walsh, US News & World Report, August 14, 2008.

Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism had several flaws, but one of her observations has lodged itself permanently in the national psyche as a handy cliché whenever some human monster is found to have a taste for the art of Walter Keane or, like Kim Jong Il, for pornographic movies: The Banality of Evil.

Newsweek, an arbiter of middle-brow American taste, delicately raises the matter of the banality of our present rulers in its current issue. [1] In "The Fiction Behind Torture Policy," columnist Dahlia Lithwick gingerly attempts to chide U.S. government figures who rationalized torturing terrorist suspects because a fictional character named Jack Bauer did it in a TV melodrama called "24:"

Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial interrogation techniques including waterboarding, sexual humiliation and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told [British legal expert Philippe] Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas." Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security chief, gushed in a panel discussion on "24" organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show "reflects real life."

John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced the so-called torture memos — simultaneously redefining both the laws of torture and of logic — cites Bauer in his book War by Other Means. "What if, as the Fox television program ''24" recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?" Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking in Canada last summer, shows a gift for this casual toggling between television and the Constitution. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives." Scalia said. "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?"

Ms. Lithwick goes on to explain to us, in earnest and schoolmarmish fashion, that information obtained through torture is rarely reliable. She also gives us a synopsis of the television show in question, indicating that the Jack Bauer character operates outside the law, and is willing to take the consequences. She goes on to note that a real-life terrorist suspect was tortured and maltreated for years before being released without charge; but "Jack Bauer would have known inside of 10 minutes he was not a ticking time bomb."

All true and correct, as far as it goes, and Ms. Lithwick's mild reprovals against torture — because it rarely "works," and because it's against the law — are unimpeachable. But there's something unsatisfying about her damning the whole business with such faint damns. Could it be that she, or her editors, calculated that a significant percentage of Newsweek readers are "fans" of fictional TV dramas and take them seriously, and therefore might be offended if they were told unambiguously how obscene, absurd, and psychotic it is to base national security policy on a made-up TV show? Could it be that Ms. Lithwick herself takes television fantasy seriously, as she implies when she expatiates about how Jack Bauer makes a moral choice?

She even compares the show's central ethic favorably with the behavior exhibited by the Bush administration: Bauer is willing to take the heat, whereas the gray, mole-like bureaucrats in the White House and the agencies are not. It never even occurs to her, though, to determine whether "24," a production of the scrofulous Rupert Murdoch media empire, had a political agenda in the first place when it attempted to condition the public to accept the "ticking time bomb" scenario, and when it made a lawless government functionary who tortured seem cooler and more principled than the Nervous Nellys who tried to restrain him.

Let us speak in a less tongue-tied fashion than Ms. Lithwick, a corporate drone no doubt worried about offending this or that corporate or governmental interest.

Just what kind of half-crazed nitwit would say, as does Michael Chertoff, a cabinet-level official in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, that 24 "reflects real life?" Every American citizen should think through the implications of that statement in the light of Chertoff's influence over domestic surveillance.

And do we really want as a Supreme Court justice someone who could utter "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" It would be an understatement to say that a person who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality should not be in charge of interpreting the Constitution. Such a man might in fact be a candidate for psychiatric observation.

Alas, it is not surprising that America's criminal ruling class has such banal, trashy, twisted minds.

* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.

[1] Newsweek.

One thing that's always bothered me is the notion that Dr. Ivins, or any solitary individual, could have carried off these attacks but then stopped cold. Let's say you're a deranged, homicidal microbiologist. You're a top scientist at the top U.S. biological warfare laboratory. You manage to cook up your private stash of anthrax. You mail samples to diverse parties. People die. And then, what? You just decide, "OK, I've had my fun, now I'll get back to work"? What kind of compartmented psychology is that? Of course I'm no psychiatrist but I should imagine that the internal pressure on such an individual would be overwhelming, that they could not possibly resist the temptation to continue sending anthrax letter bombs until they were eventually caught. Isn't that what always happens with serial murderers?

Which leads also to the question of why the particular targets? The office of the Senate Majority Leader at the time, Tom Daschle, and the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, Pat Leahy. To ABC, NBC, and CBS, and the New York Post. And to the offices in Boca Raton, Florida of the National Enquirer. Wait, the National Enquirer? If the point is to panic the Senate into passing the Patriot Act then Daschle and Leahy made sense, being probably the two key Senators necessary. ABC, NBC, and CBS made sense for being the main network news outlets. But who gives a fig for the New York Post except people who live in New York City? And the Enquirer — that's just straight out of left field. I can practically hear some FBI agent reflexively prating on about 'throwing off suspicion' and how diabolically clever Dr. Ivins was, but I am willing to bet that the FBI will never find any evidence whatsoever linking Ivins with the Enquirer, or that he even knew of its existence. To properly wrap up the case these choices should enter, somehow, into the narrative.

Moreover, if it does now close the case, the FBI should at least attempt to explain how it managed to screw things up for so long.

There aren't any contemporary Huey Longs out there to drive this point home, but Sam argues that public attitudes towards wealth can change very rapidly, as they have in the American past. Possibly, but in any case I think controlling wealth belongs on every progressive's policy short list. And I hasten to add that this is a view well within America's own intellectual traditions and not a Marxist import!

I interviewed Sam a month or so ago but unfortunately it was an awfully bad connection so the recording wasn't usable. To make up for that we plan to get together in person in early August for another conversation, which I hope will make a great podcast shortly thereafter.

This, nevertheless, is exactly what Congress is willing to do. By not asking the obvious questions members of Congress have gone a long way towards proving that, so far as Americans are concerned, they are — to put it bluntly — traitors.

In a world of limited political resources it doesn't make sense to try to re-educate, enlighten, or otherwise help such completely unresponsive people except insofar as that's part of some activity aimed at and in support of the Liberal base, or personally, insofar as one believes in small acts of unrewarded charity and kindness. And there's an important corollary: Liberal voters can't afford to lose their sense of solidarity.

It's important to remain vigilant, ready to try to fend off new outrages by this gang of war criminals. On the other hand, skittish doesn't help. I don't know why certain journalists keep issuing warnings but unless they know something critical that you and I don't I wish they'd stop.