As much I hated Obama I will give him credit for one thing.
While both Obama and McCain were interventionist assholes Obama never went further than drone strikes, the occasional bombing campaign and arming "Moderate" rebels.
McCain meanwhile was diehard when it came to those matters. Even a one term McCain Presidency probably would have resulted in Operation Iraqi Freedom style interventions in Syria and Libya and maybe Iran as well.
And thats not even getting into the Russia question.
Back in the summer of '08 McCain wanted to intervene in the South Ossetia War. Yep 6 years before the Crimea annexation McCain was already beating the drum for WW3 over something even dumber and even less relevant to America.
I will never understand what it is with NeoCons and thinking war is fun and easy and consequence free. Well besides the fact that they don't have to fight in any of their foreign adventures.
Except you're forgetting Obama implemented the surge in Afghanistan, and sent special forces into Iraq/Syria to
fight ISIS train a bunch of Al Queda & target supporting airstrikes. He also put "security forces" in Libya, and almost got us involved in Egypt.
With McCain might have seen a larger presence in Libya, but I don't think we'd have seen anything different in Syria. Syria was Obama being caught unprepared and unready to support any of the other Arab revolutions, and wanting to leave a legacy as helping spread the power of the people. He just chose the wrong damn country. Honestly I think we'd have seen a greater US role in fighting ISIS in Iraq, Syria is Russia's stomping ground and involvement in Syria would have risked alienating Turkey. I can do an effort-post about it people want to read a lot of words that boil down to "Everything in the region is fucked, the only real solution is to glass the mideast and start over".
South Ossetia War, I've got mixed feelings on, in so much as Georgia has been a pretty solid ally*, and it would have been nice to have shown them some material support. OTOH, they had been poking the bear in the area for years. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I also have mixed feelings on Iran's attempted Persian Spring. Their government is one of the key sources of instability in the mideast, both directly (by arming, funding, training, supporting and sheltering Islamist terror groups) and indirectly (by exerting political influence & funding foreign political groups to keep other nations from countering their agenda). They went from a liberal western styled country to a theocracy because in the wake of the Monarchy's collapse, the only thing most people had in common was Islam, and the Islamists just coopted the monarchy's mechanisms for silencing dissent. In general, the population who isn't involved in the government doesn't like the government, and I think even just Libyan-styled "civilian protection" + some sort of communications support for the reformists would have resulted in a change in government - if not a complete overthrow, definitely serious reforms.
OTOH, in addition to revolutions usually turning out to destructive blood-lettings that often change very little for the better, and it almost certainly costing the US billions of dollars and who knows what in lives, without Iran, the sole power in the Mideast becomes Saudi Arabia. With no more Iranian boogey man, SA doesn't need the support of the US anymore**, and they are free to implement their own agenda of funding, supporting, and sheltering Sunni Islamic terror group with no one to oppose them with Iraq and Iran both in a state of "being completely fucked". (again, Everything in the region is fucked, the only real solution is to glass the mideast and start over)
Edit: A more interesting thing to think about is "Assuming McCain won, and since people wouldn't be turning out for Chocolate Jesus means no major Democratic congressional gains... with any VP, how well do you think he'd have responded to the 2009 economic collapse?"
*Ok, more like "a very consistent suck-up" but close enough.
** They still would, to keep their own radical religious wackos from going off the rails and over throwning, but much less support, and not internationally. Plus with no Iran, they could get back to the 80's policy of sending the biggest wackos to other countries to be someone else's problem (and hopefully get killed). It doesn't always play out like that, and that's how we got bin Laden.
