John Mccain is a man who opposes Donald Trump. As the Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, he recently visited US troops fighting alongside the Kurds in Syria. He was the Republican nominee for the presidential election in 2008 against Obama but failed to defeat the eventual president. On the positive side, he has been a member of the senate for 5 terms and won his 6th election recently. Until the election, he was relatively mute, but after winning another 6-year term, he has become Donald's principal opponent. McCain by his utterances has earned the wrath of Donald who once commented that he was not a war hero as he was captured and made a POW.
Secret visit
McCain's visit was kept secret and came about the same time General Mattis was in Iraq meeting US troops there. He had gone to assess the progress of the Iraqi assault on the city of Mosul. This city is the largest stronghold of ISIS in Iraq. The Iraqi army has been making heavy progress in taking Mosul, but save for US air cover they would have been defeated long ago. McCain also visited Turkey and Saudi Arabia. He met with Erdogan and the Saudi king. These visits were in a way trying to upstage the president, who he criticizes routinely.
McCain as a strategist
The visit is an attempt to show that he has a better awareness of the ground conditions than Donald. He had also criticized the US commando raid in Yemen as a relative failure.
McCain was a pilot in the US air force but was shot down and captured. He was held as a POW for 6 years. The man assumes that he knows more about military strategy than others after decades of experience in political and military meetings. McCain is supposed to have discussed strategy to defeat the ISIS.
Future
McCain is 80 and this is in all probability his last tenure in the senate.
Having nothing to lose, he has become the greatest critic of Donald. In all his years so far McCain never put forward any plan to beat the ISIS. He is now coming out. His visit to the Middle East may not yield any result.
