Sen. John McCain: A Paladin for our times

Watching Sen. John (Bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran) McCain traipsing around Ukraine, hogging camera time with the thugs revolting against the duly elected thugs, I'm reminded of one of my favorite shows from the Golden Age of Television: 'Have Gun Will Travel'. In it a Civil War veteran with the mysterious moniker 'Paladin' is a sophisticated, debonair gun- for-hire in the Old West. Working out of a fancy San Francisco hotel, Paladin, played by the great Richard Boone, took on a new and dangerous mission each week for 225 episodes between 1957 and 1963. At some point in each show we'd see the enigmatic business card which told us all we needed to know about Paladin's motivation for a new road trip to mayhem and adventure: HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL - WIRE PALADIN - SAN FRANCISCO.

Whether dropping bombs from 40,000 feet on innocent Vietnamese in the 1960's, strolling a Baghdad market to showoff how stable we made Iraq after destroying it, meeting with the moderate Syrian rebels who just happen to include al-Qaeda, chatting it up with his new found friend Libyan strongman Muammar Gadhafi before signaling his overthrow, telling Georgian rebels "We are all Georgians", or now hobnobbing with some pretty violent Ukrainian revolutionaries, McCain is truly a Paladin for our times. It's stamped on his business card: HAVE MILITARY INTERVENTION WILL TRAVEL - WIRE MCCAIN - WASHINGTON DC.