Blue Mass Group

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McCain on Iraq: Defining “success” down

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Now there's a really great idea from the Straight Talk Express: Talk up our “success” in Iraq:

McCain says he was right on Iraq

John McCain's new TV ad on the Iraq war all but says, “I told you so.”

… The announcer says that despite the naysayers, McCain pushed for more US troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. “Today that strategy is working,” the announcer says, an assertion supported by a decrease in US casualties and lower overall violence since the so-called surge put in place by General David Petraeus.

“Right on Iraq,” indeed. Hrm … anyone remember this? How about that whole “pre-emptive war” strategy? Does McCain care to take credit for how that's worked out — in blood or treasure?

Now, perhaps this will go over well with the dead-enders that are still on board with the whole enterprise. In any event, it's more evidence of McCain — among many, many others — who have tried to have it seventy-eleven different ways on Iraq. And the real question is whether McCain has a plan to get us out, or if a President McCain keeps us there for decades.

Did the Boston Globe or the Des Moines Register ask him? 

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  1. Lately I’ve been thinking that if, heaven forbid, we get another Republican president, McCain would probably be the least harmful – with the possible exception of Ron Paul, who is good on Iraq but terrible on almost everything else, and anyway doesn’t have a chance.

    <

    p>McCain, unlike the other Republican candidates, is at least half-way sane and reasonable and appears (except for Iraq) to be in touch with reality.  The others are vastly more dangerous.

    <

    p>One of my friends said that if we have another Republican president that we might as well flush the Constitution down the toilet.  I agreed with her, but I think that is much less true with McCain.

    • we might as well flush the Constitution down the toilet.  I agreed with her, but I think that is much less true with McCain.

      <

      p>Isn’t that what McCain Feingold Shays Meehan did?

      • But when we talk of the first amendment here, we refer to the separation of church and state.  Please make a note of it.

        • Blackout periods were ruled unconstitutional

          <

          p>Just saying.  I think the whole thing on its face should be ruled unconstitutional but with the current makeup of the court that won’t happen.  The first amendment first and foremost deals with “political speech”.  Money is a form of speech in my opinion.  

          • Unfortunately, by any remotely reasonable standard, that’s a really stupid opinion.

            <

            p>(It’s also rather amusing how conservatives tend to rail against “activist judges” and howl for Roe to be overturned, yet turn around and insist that Buckley was handed down ex cathedra and must not be questioned.)

    • I think I agree with your friend.

      <

      p>McCain has been disappointing, though not, for me, on Iraq.  He caved on torture and spent years sucking up to Bush and Rove when we know what he really thinks of them.  Disappointing.

      <

      p>I guess I was always willing to vote for 2000 McCain, but 2000 McCain had no chance of securing the GOP nomination without morphing into 2008 McCain.  Disappointing.

      <

      p>On this issue, I tend to agree with him.  The left is a-n-g-r-y with Bush because they (put in motion the systemic mechanism culminating when the military) invaded Iraq.  Much of the country is angry at Bush for the fiasco that is now Iraq.  It is not al all clear to me that this anger is, like the left’s, for starting the process in the first place, or, unlike the left’s, for bollixing it up once commenced.

      <

      p>I think this is a good gambit– smoke out daylight between the left and the middle on Iraq, and find a way to express anger among Republicans at Bush for getting them into their present fix.

      <

      p>Unfortunately for him, the Straight Talk Express is well past its sell-by date.

        • The right has good reason to be angrywith Bush.  They are four years removed from being an electoral juggernaut, and it has been pissed away for no gain.  Think of how Democrats feel about the unrealized potential of Bill Clinton, and then imagine if Bill had not only not realized his potential, but created an unmitigated fiasco.

          <

          p>If I’m a Republican, I’m not sure who to be angry at–among the candidates, the Congress, only the administration– for the big turd in my apple pie.

          • … meant to be ‘angry, not ‘not angry’.  Speed kills.

            <

            p>I think it needs to be said, given recent poling (and even some not so recent) that ‘no gain’ is positively a euphemism for this administration.  I suspect, given a choice of bundles of policies and results, even many GOPers would vote Clinton in again.  Of course, to be accurate and fair, such a choice would have to be ‘blind’ (Clinton’s and GBW’s names not mentioned) because of the knee-jerk reaction the media has programmed into the public with the name ‘Clinton’.

  2. I doubt his administration would’ve started “nation building” in Iraq by dissolving every socialist institution in the country in the name of “free market cures all even in traumatized war zones” and I seriously doubt he would’ve been doing things like asking appointees for the CPA about their views on ABORTION (seriously, I still cannot believe that).

    <

    p>And I’ll give him some credit for, when he saw the change in strategy this January to what it should’ve been 4 years prior…  Proper counter-insurgency strategy, 27 company strength forts in Baghdad with neighborhood level responsibility, etc, as opposed to the previous strategy of hide on big bases and blast through the city every so often at 50mph with guns trained on everybody for “presence patrols”..  I’ll give him credit for calling it what it was, a positive change in the right direction instead of jumping off the band wagon like the rest of the war supporters in the face of public exhaustion on the matter.  Showed vision and bravery on his part to recognize a good change in strategy, and doesn’t necessarily implicate him for 4 years of previous bungling.

  3. I supported McCain back in 2000, and I was at the Crowne Plaza (it might have been a Clarion Hotel at the time) for his victory party. What a thrill.

    <

    p>Since then he’s been a disappointment. I was with him when he termed Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance.” It turned my stomach to see him go to Bob Jones University without challenging their racist policies, and to see him give Falwell a big sloppy kiss in his attempts to suck up to the religious right.

    <

    p>I was with him as a fiscal conservative, for a balanced budget and against pork barrel politics. I was sadly let down when he decided to run as a presumptive nominee, spending like a drunken sailor to project an aura of inevitability. He now tries to cast himself as being even better because he was able to fix that problem.

    <

    p>I was with him when he railed against the cynical Karl Rove politics that used dirty tricks and downright hateful tactics (combined with $3 million spent in a single week) to submarine him in South Carolina. But I saw a quid pro quo for his support of Bush in 2004, and this was confirmed all the more with his recent “let bygones be bygones” comments about Rove.

    <

    p>Will the real John McCain please stand up? Are you the fiscal conservative of profligate spender? The maverick who stands up for what he believes in, or the “do whatever it takes to get elected” career politician? Reaching out across the aisle, or reaching further right into polarization?

    <

    p>On second thought, don’t bother standing up. I’m long past caring.  

  4. <

    p>…as far as I can tell, his only claim to fame was that he sat on his butt in Hanoi for a few years, after he was shot down.  He could have been repatriated and run a few more bombing missions, which might have helped the (misguided) US war effort in Vietnam.  

    <

    p>To the subject matter of the post Defining “success” down.  Not only is McCain moving the goal-posts, he is also rotating them.  Nobody knows what “success” means anymore, since the politicians won’t tell us what they mean by “success.”  I hate to repeat it (obviously I don’t) but Krieg ist eine Fortsetzung der Politik, mit anderen Mitteln.  What is the Politik that McCain, GWBush, or whomever wish to be achieved in Iraq?

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