After his death, testimonies about his service and character poured in from around the country. He has been described as a maverick and a moderate who tried to wrest his party away from the dangers of populism. However, Dr. Nazia Kazi, an activist and professor of anthropology at Stockton University, told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear that McCain's real legacy consists in his votes for the US to go into perpetual war.
"One of the things we are seeing right now in public discourse mourning John McCain is the legacy of this somewhat conflicted, paradoxical figure with a mixed legacy. But actually, John McCain was very consistent. He was consistently pro-war. He was consistently pro-US empire. He was consistently anti-women, anti-choice and consistently anti-environment, but you wouldn't know that from looking at the mainstream media right now," Kazi told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear Monday.
"It's good to be on a show that is refusing to participate in the sort of historical amnesia that comes along with celebrating the legacy of John McCain," Kazi told hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker.
"I tend to avoid [mainstream media], but I had to dip in to see what NPR and The New York Times were up to, and just as I suspected, [they are publishing] these laudatory pieces about this ‘war hero,' ‘the last lion of the Senate.' I saw a comparison of John McCain to Aretha Franklin, saying we lost two greats this week. So, this is the historical amnesia that I am talking about. It's just sickening," Kazi added. Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul," died at the age of 76 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on August 16.
McCain, a six-term US Senator and former prisoner of war in Vietnam, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2017. On Friday, the politician's family said he had decided to halt his treatment, Sputnik reported.
McCain was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1982, and, after serving two terms, was elected to the US Senate in 1986. McCain ran as the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 2008 election against then-Senator Barack Obama, who won the vote. McCain also ran against George W. Bush during the Republican primary race in 2000 before losing to the Texan who would sit in the White House for the next eight years.
"I think you are right to steer this discussion to John McCain's relationship to warfare," Kazi said.
"Because this is why establishment Democrats would celebrate his legacy, because that is where we see consensus of two parties — around support of our military apparatus and regime change operations around the world. So, when you look at the legacy of John McCain: literally on September 12, 2001, he was already talking about the US taking military action in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Libya," Kazi told Radio Sputnik.
"John McCain is part of the deeply militarized crisis we find ourselves in the global stage. John McCain was no less than a regime change fanatic. He outright supported bombing Syria to oblivion, escalating intervention in Afghanistan. [He supported] military intervention even in places like Bosnia and Nigeria and regime change in North Korea. He is a person who, when protesters descended on the Capitol building to protest Henry Kissinger, he called them low-life scum and called to get them arrested. It makes sense that the Democrats would rally for him, because warfare is the consensus of our two political parties," Kazi added.
According to Kazi, McCain was also in favor of the Arizona SB 1070 law, passed in 2010, which requires aliens older than 18 to carry proper identification at all times. Violation of SB 1070 is considered a federal misdemeanor crime, and the law is believed to be one of the strictest anti-illegal immigration measures passed in Arizona around the time.
"McCain has been in favor of a border fence [between the US and Mexico] and [has been in support of] criminalizing immigrants and militarizing our borders," Kazi added.
