The Center for American Progress, a neo-Clintonian think tank, recently hosted a “panel discussion” (euphemism) on the foreign policy agenda of Sen. McCain.  For those that are familiar with this organization, you won’t be surprised to find out that the panelists were light on substance and heavy rhetoric.  The panel essentially argued that Sen. McCain’s foreign policy is myopically focused on Iraq (for which he has no real plan, they claim).  You can read Sen. McCain’s strategy here.  According to the panelists, Sen. McCain wants the United States to remain in Iraq for 100 years–the insinuation being that Sen. McCain is perfectly fine with conducting a bloody counterinsurgency campaign for a century.  The U.S. maintains a military presence in Germany, Japan and South Korea–decades after major combat operations ceased.  The U.S. will likely negotiate some sort of Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.  These “panelists” need to brush up on their military-diplomatic history.   

One panelist, Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress, explained:

If you read John McCain’s essay in Foreign Affairs last year, he said it [his foreign policy vision] was “An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom.”  I’m going to highlight freedom because freedom is a consistent thread between President Bush and John McCain, and I would submit that freedom is just another word for not having a real national security strategy.

Like his colleagues, Mr. Katulis really needs to brush up on his twentieth-century American history.  Freedom has been a consistent thread between a majority of U.S. presidents during the twentieth century, including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  Freedom has been a central theme in U.S. foreign policy for much of the last century, through Republican and Democratic administrations.  Clearly, it has been the position of multiple presidential administrations that advancing liberal democracy throughout the world serves America’s national interest.  President Bush’s and Sen. McCain’s focus on freedom isn’t earth-shattering.  In fact, freedom and liberty have been the ideological underpinnings of U.S. grand strategy for quite some time, arguably back to the founding of the Republic.  Mr. Katulis’s argument is unclear.  Listening to Mr. Katulis I am left with more questions than answers.