McCain's war

The Maverick sat this week for an interview with Sean Hannity of FOX "News". From the FOX transcript, here's what the Maverick had to say about the Iraq War:

HANNITY: Last question. Back to Iraq for one second, in the areas of agreement. As long as it takes to finish it? Because Hillary and Barack Obama both attacked you on that.

MCCAIN: Yeah. And could I just mention this 100 year thing.

HANNITY: Yes.

MCCAIN: I love town hall meetings and I'm going to continue them. That's the important way you learn from people as well as they learn from you. I was in an exchange with a guy. Look, that is American presence. This war will be won if we stay with it and then it's a question of American presence.

We have troops in South Korea as a result of the Korean War. We have troops in Germany and Japan.

HANNITY: Right.

MCCAIN: Et cetera, et cetera.

So that's an agreement. We have troops in Kuwait as a result of the First Gulf War. But we will win this war. We will win it. We will succeed.

And by the way, let me remind you again, Sean, the last few days have proven again, Al Qaeda is on the run but they are not defeated. They are not defeated. We made an enormous sacrifice in the last few days. So we've got to trust General Petraeus and these brave Americans that are over there to tell us when it's appropriate to withdraw but the important thing to Americans is not American presence. I haven't seen anyone demonstrate against troops in Kuwait. It's American success. And I'm sorry it took so long to answer —

HANNITY: No, it's important.

The Maverick's comment on "this 100 year thing" was pretty murky, as is a lot of what he says in general. He was referring to a comment he made in a New Hamshire town meeting that the US could be in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" and that "that would be fine with me". He went on to qualify by saying that he meant 100 years "as long as Americans are not being injured, harmed or killed." When David Corn asked him about it afterwards, he gave disturbing answer that was nevertheless more clear than what he told Sean Hannity on Wednesday:

After the event ended, I asked McCain about his "hundred years" comment, and he reaffirmed the remark, excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for "a thousand years" or "a million years," as far as he was concerned. The key matter, he explained, was whether they were being killed or not: "It's not American presence; it's American casualties." U.S. troops, he continued, are stationed in South Korea, Japan, Europe, Bosnia, and elsewhere as part of a "generally accepted policy of America's multilateralism." There's nothing wrong with Iraq being part of that policy, providing the government in Baghdad does not object. (my emphasis)

It would be too much to expect the adoring press corps to sift through what that actually means in policy terms. As we see in the two examples above, the Maverick justifies his 100 Years War (or longer!) comments by saying he means as long as Americans are there solely as tourists in uniform, in no danger of harm. Maybe being showered by those flowers we heard about before the invasion in 2003.

One, this business about, "It's not American presence; it's American casualties", is part of the faith of the air power zealots. The argument runs like this: Only American casualties turn popular and Congressional opinion against a war. If we rely on air power instead of ground troops, we can minimize American casualties and no one at home will care if we're having a war.

Like much of the devout belief of the air power zealots, this notion that only American casualties affect the public's opinion of a war is based on little more than simple assertion followed by repeated professions of faith. But it does indicate to me that McCain's "maverick" ideas about the Iraq War probably include continual escalation of the air war there, and in Afghanistan, too.

The 100 years line also tells me that McCain envisions what amounts to a significant permanent American military presence in Iraq. Leaving aside whether the examples he cites are relevant to Iraq (they mostly aren't), the issue of a permanent presence in Iraq is a big thing. Especially since even the Shi'a government parties that are most allied to the Americans want us to leave. A massive American presence, a Christian country's presence in the eyes of many Muslims, in a major Arab and Muslim country will not be viewed favorably outside of Iraq, either. And the American people should know just what the 100 Years planners have in mind as the mission for those permanent bases.

Third, the Maverick's explanation for the "100 Years" line amounts to a dodge so huge that even a reporter or a Big Pundit ought to be able to see it. But most of them will pretend they don't. Which is, just how many years of war is the Maverick willing to see the US undertake in Iraq? In a few days, we'll be at the official five year point. Does the Maverick think we should continue with the war for five years? Ten years? Will any of his pals in our "press corps" bother to even ask him?

McCain's public stance is basically to keep fighting indefinitely until we "win". But what does the Maverick see as a "win"? All Sunni and Shi'a and Kurdish militias surrendering unconditionally to American forces and agreeing to be shipped off to Guantanamo to be tortured for the rest of their lives? The disbanding of the Mahdi Army? The Iraqi government starting a new Iran-Iraq war? Other than escalating the bombing, I doubt he has any other idea about what to do except to keep fighting and hope something good happens. Or hope that he can do good enough propaganda to make the public believe something good is happening.

The closed feedback loop the war fans have constructed for themselves is as amazing as it is appalling. The marvelous Maverick says, "And by the way, let me remind you again, Sean, the last few days have proven again, Al Qaeda is on the run but they are not defeated. They are not defeated. We made an enormous sacrifice in the last few days."

Presumably by "Al Qaeda" here he means "somebody other than Americans committing violent acts in Iraq". This is a response, I assume (the Maverick is really not very clear on a lot of these things), to the recent news of new horrific mass killings in Iraq, as well as the death of the kidnapped Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. If the violence looks like it's increasing, that shows we need to keep the troops there fighting. If the violence looks like it's going down, that also shows we need to keep the troops there fighting. What kind of "win" would change that kind of logic?

For all practical purposes, the Maverick is ready to commit the US to a permanent colonial-style war in Iraq.

He continues:

So we've got to trust General Petraeus and these brave Americans that are over there to tell us when it's appropriate to withdraw but the important thing to Americans is not American presence. I haven't seen anyone demonstrate against troops in Kuwait. It's American success.

As the members of our punditocracy make their admiring tributes to the Maverick wonderfulness, we're not likely to hear many of them notice that a surprising amount of what he says is just garbled, like that quote.

How did we ever get to the point that politicians running for President think they need to pretend that they are going to completely defer their decision-making on a war to the generals, or to one favorite general? If that's really their attitude, they shouldn't be running for President at all and instead backing some general for the office.

Garbled though it is, when the Maverick says, "the important thing to Americans is not American presence. ... It's American success," he's employing a different measure of what leads people to support or oppose a war than the number of casualties, which he was saying moments before. Here he's saying as long as we have "success", everything will be fine. Or something like that.

The question remains, how many more years of "success" in the continuing war in Iraq does the Maverick expect to see the United States endure? How many additional trillions of dollars is this "success" going to cost? Just how low with dollar dive as a consequence of all this "success"?

By the way, our Savior-General Petreaus is giving us his latest view on our "success", as reported in Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress' by Cameron Barr Washington Post 03/14/08:

In what appeared to be a foreshadowing of his congressional testimony, which his aides said he would not discuss explicitly, Petraeus insisted that Iraqi leaders still have an opportunity to act. "We're going to fight like the dickens" to maintain the gains in security and "where we can to try and build on it," he said.

While violence has declined dramatically since late 2006, when thousands of Iraqis were being killed each month, U.S. military data show that attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians have leveled off or risen slightly in the early part of 2008. "I don't see an enormous uptick projected right now," Petraeus said, speaking in his windowless office in the U.S. Embassy, which is housed in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace. "What you have seen is some sensational attacks, there's no question about that."

Petraeus said several factors may account for the recent violence, including increased U.S. and Iraqi operations against insurgents in the northern city of Mosul - which has lately become one of Iraq's most dangerous - and insurgent efforts to reestablish some of their havens in Baghdad. And Petraeus said U.S. commanders could not discount the possibility that insurgents "know the April testimony is coming up."

That's now the logic of McCain's War. If things have stabilized, that's "success" and we have "to fight like the dickens" to maintain it. If things are going badly, that's also "success" because it shows that The Terrorists are desperate and that also means we have "to fight like the dickens" not to let The Terrorists be able to brag that they defeated us.

This sounds like open-ended war to me. McCain's 100 Years War.

iraq war, mccain