The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations

by John McCain

What makes us exceptional? Our wealth? Our natural resources? Our military power? Our big, bountiful country? No, our founding ideals and our fidelity to them at home and in our conduct in the world make us exceptional. They are the source of our wealth and power. Living under the rule of law. Facing threats with confidence that our values make us stronger than our enemies. Acting as an example to other nations of how free people defend their liberty without sacrificing the moral conviction upon which it is based, respect for the dignity possessed by all God’s children, even our enemies. This is what made us the great nation we are.

The ultimate victim of torture is the torturer, the one who inflicts pain and suffering at the cost of their humanity.

the thought of that, that my captors had, on the whole, treated prisoners more humanely than the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib treated prisoners, made me sick to my stomach.

In truth, most of the CIA’s claims that abusive interrogations of detainees had produced vital leads to help locate bin Laden were exaggerated, misleading, and in some cases, complete bullshit.

Will we act in this world with respect for our founding conviction that all people have equal dignity in the eyes of God and should be accorded the same respect by the laws and governments of men? That is the most important question history ever asks of us. Answering in the affirmative by our actions is the highest form of patriotism, and we cannot do that without access to the truth. The cruelty of our enemies doesn’t absolve us of this duty. This was never about them. It was about us.

If you’re going to commit American lives to a conflict, you must give them a mission they can win and the support they need to do it.

I think we have all had over the last year or so reason to wonder about the direction of our country and some of the people leading it. I would like to be again in the company of Americans who embody our nation’s greatness, and who know it is something more profound and dearer than a politician’s campaign slogan.

Democratic internationalists had predicted for years that the autocracies of the Middle East would come undone when generations of young people without jobs, without hope, and without recourse had finally had enough and revolted.

an accountable government and economic opportunities. But of such desires sweeping revolutions can be made.

Here’s one fact fools ignore. Our Constitution and closely divided polity don’t allow for winner-take-all governance. You need the opposition’s cooperation to get most big things done.

They need to be confronted, not ignored or winked at or quietly dismissed as kooks. They need to be confronted before their noxious views spread further, and damage for generations the reputation of the Republican Party.

Our culture isn’t the work of one race or religion. To suggest otherwise is to contradict our ideals and to doubt their power.

So, I’ve been to crazy town before, and I’ve seen how impervious to reason, facts, and common sense these delusions can be.

From Joe McCarthy acolytes to moon landing deniers to 9/11 Truthers and Obama Birthers, there has always been a market for “the paranoid style in American politics,” as historian Richard Hofstadter termed it.

Russia had not announced retaliatory measures yet. We would later learn that was because President-elect Trump’s incoming national security advisor, retired lieutenant general Mike Flynn, had urged the Russian ambassador in Washington not to impose new sanctions, presumably implying that once the new administration was in office they would reconsider the sanctions the White House had just announced. If that was indeed what happened, it was a terrible thing to do. A ruthless adversary had tried to sabotage our elections, aggravating our political divisions and worsening our government’s dysfunction. Sparing Putin any serious penalty for his assault on our democracy doesn’t just encourage further aggression, it tells the victims and potential victims of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, the Baltics, Poland, Moldova, and Montenegro, and in Russia itself, that the United States, the greatest power in the world, couldn’t be relied on to defend its own democracy. It’s a colossal strategic mistake, and a stain on our honor.

During one of the darkest years of the early Cold War, William Faulkner delivered a short speech in Stockholm upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. “I decline to accept the end of man,” Faulkner said. “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

I’m not sure what to make of President Trump’s convictions. At times as a candidate and as President, he has appeared to be more than merely a realpolitik adherent. He seemed to mock the idea that America has any business at all promoting its values abroad. I don’t know if that is sincerely his view or if he believes that the global progress of democracy and the rule of law should be only a distant, notional goal of American statecraft. He threatened to deliberately kill the spouses and children of terrorists, implying that an atrocity of that magnitude would show the world America’s toughness. His lack of empathy for refugees, innocent, persecuted, desperate men, women, and children, is disturbing. The way he speaks about them is appalling, as if welfare or terrorism were the only purposes they could have in coming to our country. His reaction to unflattering news stories, calling them “fake news,” whether they’re credible or not, is copied by autocrats who want to discredit and control a free press. He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones. He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes. The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity. He has showered with praise some of the world’s worst tyrants. He said Putin was doing “a great job rebuilding Russia,” failing to note...

That discredits our moral authority wherever we invoke it.

Bigger misfits haven’t been seen inside a White House since William Taft got stuck in his bathtub.

Above all else, we must stand in solidarity with the imprisoned, the silenced, the tortured, and the murdered because we are a country with a conscience. It is a mistake to view foreign policy, as the Chinese would like us to view it, as simply transactional. It’s a mistake and a dangerous idea. Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three. Were they not, we would be one great power among the others of history. We would have acquired wealth and power for a time, before receding into the disputed past. But we are a more exceptional country than that. We saw the world as it was and we made it better.

Principled compromises aren’t unicorns. They can be found when we put political advantage slightly second to the problem we’re trying to solve.

Here’s my unsolicited advice to the American voter. If a candidate for Congress pledges to ride his white horse to Washington and lay waste to all the scoundrels living off your taxes, to never work or socialize or compromise with any of them, to make an example of them, and then somehow get them to bow to your will and the superiority of your ideas, don’t vote for that guy. It sounds exciting, but it’s an empty boast and a commitment to more gridlock, and gridlock is boring.

Humility is the self-knowledge that you possess as much inherent dignity as anyone else, and not one bit more.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here. Maybe I’ll have another five years. Maybe, with the advances in oncology, they’ll find new treatments for my cancer that will extend my life. Maybe I’ll be gone before you read this. My predicament is, well, rather unpredictable. But I’m prepared for either contingency, or at least I’m getting prepared. I have some things I’d like to take care of first, some work that needs finishing, and some people I need to see. And I want to talk to my fellow Americans a little more if I may.

“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it,” spoke my hero, Robert Jordan, in For Whom the Bell Tolls. And I do, too. I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. I’ve lived very well and I’ve been deprived of all comforts. I’ve been as lonely as a person can be and I’ve enjoyed the company of heroes. I’ve suffered the deepest despair and experienced the highest exultation. I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the

history of my times. I leave behind a loving wife, who is devoted to protecting the world’s most vulnerable, and seven great kids, who grew up to be fine men and women. I wish I had spent more time in their company. But I know they will go on to make their time count, and be of useful service to their beliefs, and to their fellow human beings. Their love for me and mine for them is the last strength I have. What an ingrate I would be to curse the fate that concludes the blessed life I’ve led. I prefer to give thanks for those blessings, and my love to the people who blessed me with theirs. The bell tolls for me. I knew it would. So I tried, as best I could, to stay a “part of the main.” I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don’t, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued success is the hope of the world. And I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine.