Video: McCain: There goes the Heartland (6:05)
McCain:
Those that want to withdraw in the next 4 to 6 months have an obligation to tell us what’s going to happen after that.
I believe that we can and it’s possible for us to prevail if we practice the Classic Counter Insurgency Methodology that has worked in the past:
You Clear. Hold. And Build.
Okay, that’s the way forward in Iraq. Easy.
Russert: What’s Plan B to Maliki if the sectarian violence does not end under his tenure with the troop build-up?
McCain: Well Bush can’t tell Maliki anything, blah blah blah, “if it’s not going to succeed [end sectarian violence] then we’re going to have to withdraw. I think that’s pretty obvious.”
Russert: “Withdraw from Iraq? “
McCain: “Well we’re going to have to examine all the options.” Then he tells us why we need to win in Iraq by sending more troops.
Russert: “How much time do you think realistically, now that we’re in the fourth year of this war, do the Iraqis have to demonstrate” progress?
McCain:
“I think it has to happen pretty soon. We haven’t done the job we had hoped to do in training Iraqi military.” blah blah blah, “Holding under our control, making progress, you’ll see it in the upcoming months, but I can’t give you an exact date on it.”
And again I want to emphasis Tim, I keep hearing over and over from some of our friends who say, “We’ve got to have a with-draw-ahhh-al, and a nearly immediate withdrawal and that was the message of the ’06 election. Joe lieberman would never have been re-elected as a strong proponent of the war against an opponent who was for pull-out if that was the American people’s attitude.”
I split the clip here because there’s so much BS but he comes back to the point that anyone advocating for a withdrawal must define come up with a plan for the chaos. Here are just a few random quotes from the next section:
- “Also, the ones who want us to pull-out they have an obligation, as I said, to tell us what we do when chaos ensues in the region.”
- “We were greeted as liberators… Look at the films when we rolled into Baghdad… It was easy by the way.”
- A litany of what went wrong, “It’s well documented,” Fiasco, Cobra II, State of Denial. It’s all there.
- “All along it was because we did not have the Classic Counter Insurgency Strategy which is: Clear. Hold. And Build.” got it class there will be a quiz at the end of the diary.
“We cleared and then would leave. As I’ve said in other hearings we were playing a game of whack-a-mole.”
Okay, that’s the essence of the new strategy, just stop leaving after the clearing part. We’re still doing the clearing part okay, no problems there, kids. Just stop the leaving part after the clearing part and then start with the holding and building parts at the same time. Easy. Could not be an easier fix. We have a super duper tried and true Classic Counter Insurgency Methodology that works real good. We just need to use it.
Russert: But bottom line Senator, if the Iraqis don’t step forward … and secure that country then you would be willing to step forward and say, “we gave it out best shot, it hasn’t worked, it’s time to move out.”
McCain: “Yes I will, but, blah, blah, blah, and yes if it doesn’t succeed then we have to explore any other options,
and I’d like to tell you what a good one is, but I can’t.”
But anyone advocating for with-draw-ahhh-al and quick pull-out, has to explain to the American people exactly what the risks are to creating more chaos and more sectarian violence. But Bush and McCain don’t have to explain anything if we arm the militias to the teeth and then withdraw when the violence continues.
In the obsequious way that only the T-man can pull off
Russert: And when you flipped that coin at the National College Football Championship the other night and Florida won did you say to yourself: “There goes Ohio in 2008?”
McCain: “There goes the Heartland.”
That’s right, Johnny Sourpuss – because even a farmer wouldn’t buy this crap. Bush lost Utah this week, Utah people.
When we first went to war I was in my senior year of college in DC. I remember just finishing an activity and a priest coming in and announcing “The president is going to address the nation. We are going to war.” He left, and we all moved down the street where there would be a room and a TV large enough to accommodate us all. I remember that I was hungry, that I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I resolved then that I would fast for the remainder of the war.
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And fast I did, no more than two meals a day – one large, one small. No snacks or candy. No beer even – tough for an Irishman with St. Patrick’s Day only a few days away. I drank milk and water only until that day a few months later when W stood on the Lincoln and declared the mission had been accomplished. I really thought it would all be over soon.
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I did other things in the meantime. Every day, several times a day, I updated my away message with the number of US and Iraqi dead and wounded from IraqBodyCount.net. I went to protests. I wrote letters. I talked to my Congressman live and in person about my opposition.
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I thought it was ridiculous that we would send half as many troops to invade and occupy a country the size of California than we did to simply liberate and defend the border (from the same enemy) of a country the size of Connecticut a decade before. Now it is finally clear to the prez that it was a ridiculous notion. He is finally sending more troops, and probably not enough troops, four years too late.
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As much as I hate this war, all wars, I believe in the Pottery Barn rule. We broke Iraq, now we own Iraq. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to put it back together again. Its not going to be pretty, and its not going to be easy, and its certainly not going to be cheap.
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Still, we did this to them. Us, the US. We now need to fix it. We need a new course and a new direction in Iraq, but we have a moral obligation to the widows and the mothers who buried their children because of the chaos we inflicted on them to fix it and at least bring back some stability.
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Twenty one thousand troops are not enough. To steal a phrase from Johnny Mac, its whack-a-mole. I hate it, hate it, but we need to send in more, not fewer, troops. I’ve got friends in Iraq. I have family in Kuwait. I want them home, but I want Iraq fixed first.
Three years ago, this is year four of the war. Although I believe strongly that the president has an obligation to the Iraqi people, he has a greater obligation to the American people.
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The war is breaking our military’s back, that was the biggest reason that Murtha gave last year (late 2005 actually) for changing his support. The military in this country can’t sustain Iraq and an escalation with no real plan and no hope of success will be even more damaging.
Where exactly does that come from? Basic morality? International law? Colin Powell’s say-so? I’m curious why you think it should follow that just because the U.S. “breaks” something it has an obligation to “put it back together again.” And even if we accept this premise, who is going to decide what constitutes “breaking” and “putting back together.” Some might argue that even with its civil war Iraq is better off now than under Hussein, for example. Just saying.
Kai, there was a point in time when I would have agreed with you; and to a certain extent I still do.
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However, I don’t see how an overdeveloped sense of guilt/responsibility is likely to be productive. There also seems to be a disturbing trend by which the more we try to “fix” things they more broken they become.
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I don’t know, but is it possible it’s in the Iraqis’ (and our own) best interests if we just back off and let somebody with some competence try to clean up our mess?
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And no, I have no idea who this would be.
At a bar, if someone is drunk, breaking things, and starting fights, the bouncers don’t say “hey you’re responsible for those mugs, stay here, you need to pay.”
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They kick you out.
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They realize that the longer you’re in there the more damage you’re going to do — so the best thing is to leave.
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I’ve never been to Pottery Barn.