CERNOBBIO, Italy - Sen. John McCain says he is disappointed with his party's presidential candidate for sidestepping world affairs in his campaign for the White House.
But in an interview with The Associated Press in Italy on Saturday, he reserved his most scathing words for President Obama, blaming him for inaction while the situation in Syria and elsewhere "cries out for American leadership."
McCain, an Arizona Republican and the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, criticized Obama for not aiding rebels in Syria, abandoning Iraq and Afghanistan, and delaying tough decisions on Iran's nuclear program.
"In a way it's almost like watching a train wreck," he said of the apparent failure to stem Iran's nuclear efforts.
As to the absence of such talk at last month's Republican National Convention that nominated Mitt Romney, McCain was cautiously bipartisan.
"Yup, it was" absent, he said. "The election is about jobs and the economy, but a failed … national security policy over time is going to lead to significant domestic problems."
"It's the job of presidents and candidates to lead and articulate their vision for America's role in the world. The world is a more dangerous place than it's been since the end of the Cold War, and so I think the president should lead and I think candidates for the presidency should lead and talk about it, and I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more."
McCain is visiting Italy's Ambrosetti Forum, an annual gathering of political and business leaders, together with two fellow senators - Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman and South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham - following a tour that took them through the Middle East.
On Friday, addressing the plenum, the trio of self-styled mavericks criticized the dysfunction in American politics, then called for far greater U.S. activism in the Middle East, particularly aiding Syria's rebels and on Iran.
McCain said sanctions almost never work, Lieberman said the "red line" should be weapons capability and not the actual creation of a weapon, and Graham said the United States should make it clear that if Iran pressed on, it faced a "massive attack" from the United States and not Israel, a scenario he said Iran's leaders know they could not survive.
In the interview, McCain was happy to detail how he would have done things differently, criticized Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq and for plans to end military operations in Afghanistan by 2014.
"I would have left a residual force of some 20,000 troops in Iraq," he said. "Things are unraveling" in a way that threatens to yield a "fractured state" divided among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions, under the sway of al-Qaida, and out of the U.S. orbit - "all the things we predicted would happen if we pulled out completely."
On Afghanistan "I've not heard him (Obama) talk about success."
McCain said Obama should also sidestep the United Nations and NATO to cobble together a coalition of European and Mideast nations willing to lend a hand - arming the rebels and backing them in establishing a safe zone.
"If we led, we could," he said. "It cries out for American leadership. American leadership is not there."
He also called for a resolute stance on Iran.
"Here's the conundrum. The president of the United States has repeatedly stated that Iranian nuclear weapons (are) unacceptable. Now we watch as they move inexorably down that path. … Right now I don't see any exit sign. That doesn't mean I'm predicting that there will be this conflict, but at the same time I don't know a way out."
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