Say What?
By Another McHistory lesson:
“I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.’’
Asked if he thought that former President Jimmy Carter, who struggled with the hostage crisis, was an appeaser, Mr. McCain replied: “I don’t know if he was an appeaser or not, but he terribly mishandled the Iranian hostage crisis.’’
The historical error in that first paragraph should speak for itself, but I’ll simply note that (a) the hostage release had been negotiated prior to Reagan’s inauguration; (b) the hostages were released literally minutes into his Presidency; and (c) if nothing else, the Reagan campaign was deeply concerned that the hostages not actually come home before the election in November. As for appeasing the religious extremists in Iran, I’ll leave it to John McCain’s memory to recall which of his favorite chief executives presided over a batch of illegal arms sales to the very people calling for “Death to America” throughout the early 1980s.
I understand that John McCain is going to continue to get away with saying flat-out-wrong shit about the contemporary Middle East, so I won’t expect the press to ask any serious questions about his understanding of America’s history in the region. But Christ….