Wednesday Maverickness

William Arkin seems sometimes to try a bit hard to be provocative and in doing so reaches a bit far in some of his arguments. But the bold Maverick's record seems to support his argument in John McCain's Nightmare in Iraq Early Warning blog 04/15/08. Arkin makes an important link between the conservative, stab-in-the-back argument over the outcome of the Vietnam War and the Straight Talker's never-surrender dogma on the Iraq War:

When John McCain describes Iraq, he sees three separate but connected story lines: The first is the "selfless service" and sacrifice of the American fighting men and women; the second is the prospects for success that derives from the first (and is obviously divorced from the actual capacity of the Iraqi government and military); and the third are the enemies of success, whether that be Washington generally and the conveniently absent completely-to-be-blamed Rumsfeld or the surrender advocates, specifically his Democratic rivals.

McCain used all of the predictable language and rhetoric of these narratives at the hearing last week. The troops, McCain said, must "leave behind a successful mission." We must "ensure that the terrible price we have paid in the war, a price that has made all of us sick at heart, has not been paid in vain," he said.

"It is a privilege beyond measure to live in a country served so well by these individuals."

"Our men and women in uniform [need] the time and support necessary to succeed in Iraq," the Senator pleads, moving on to his second justification for continuing. "Instead of abandoning Iraq to civil war, genocide and terror, and the Middle East to the destabilizing effects of these consequences, we changed the strategy and sent additional troops to carry it out." In other words, it is not about Iraq or the Iraqi people or government, just about our change in strategy to honor the troops.

Veteran leftie writer Robert Scheer, who seems to have a touching but largely futile need to find some strain of anti-militarism left in today's authoritarian Republican Party, is finally focusing in on the nightmare that John "100 Years War" McCain may be President a year from now. In The Man Who Would Be Bush Truthdig.com 04/15/08, he starts to hone in on what a nightmare that would be:

Although he previously harshly criticized the enormous waste in the Iraq occupation, today, as a presidential candidate, he opens the door to a hundred years of taxpayer dollars tossed down the drain in Iraq. The man who was tortured now hugs a leader who authorized the same. ...

A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against [?!? Scheer tries hard to find hope in the Republican Party!] in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.

Here is the transcript of John McCain being interviewed by his Hannah Montan fanboy Chris Matthews on 'Hardball College Tour:' John McCain 04/15/08. Here's a ten-minute video of the Maverick and his leading fanboy:



If the Dems are going to beat McCain, that have to be willing to get in his face about his claims about his "maverick" status, which, as we see here, his pundit fans are downright eager to promote for him: on global climate change, on torture, on the Iraq War. When the Straight Talker pronounces whoppers like this - "The war was mishandled terribly for nearly four years by Donald Rumsfeld and this administration. I fought against it. I argued against." - the Dems have to be able to ram it back down his throat. Otherwise they'll lose.

It's also important to note the key assumption behind the Maverick's 100-years-in-Iraq position:

But Chris, the point is American casualties. If we’d had a continuous loss of brave young Americans in South Korea after the armistice, I think Americans would have said, Bring them home.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

MCCAIN: But as you said, we didn’t. So the key to it is American casualties. And so I believe those casualties are declining. I believe it’s long and hard and tough, as we’ve just seen in the last couple weeks with this uptick in violence and more losses. So I think that over time, as the Iraqis take over more and more of their responsibilities for their own security, then American troops withdraw and gradually withdraw. (my emphasis)

Even in the flawed arguments about the unpopularity of the Korean War and the Vietnam War from conservative political scientist John Mueller which seem to have had such a large influence, there is little evidence to suggest that an unpopular war will become popular again if American casualties decline. In fact, over the year 2007, as reported American casualties in Iraq declined in the later months of the year and the first couple of months of 2008, the war continued to become more unpopular.

But the most likely war strategy that comes with the notion that "the point is American casualties" as the Maverick expresses it, is a vastly increased reliance on air power. This means that a McCain strategy would drastically escalate the air war in Iraq, which involves dropping 2,000-lb. bombs on suspected insurgent targets in the middle of heavily-populated urban areas.

Tags: iraq war, mccain