A preview of how they'll run against him in the fall.
« Shadegg Retires | Main | Obama's Circle Of Support » The DNC v. John McCain11 Feb 2008 07:56 pm Comments (29)
Frankly, McCain's position on the war is what ensures that I won't get his vote. I have great respect for John McCain, and would go so far as saying I'm a fan. But McCain's crazed insistence on the virtue of the Iraq War unfortunately makes it impossible for me to ever support the man. And it will be his downfall in the election - because if he's not right on that, what use is he? 
This is incredibly misleading. Factcheck looked at the last round of incorrect smears the DNC put out and you can read about them here: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/smear_or_be_smeared.html Look, the fact of the matter is that the massive failures of the occuption as conducted by Donald Rumself came as a complete shock to everyone. The initial invasion of Iraq came off without a hitch and Saddam's army was defeated in a few days time. That was the easy part McCain was talking about - and it was easy. Then came the more difficult (but not impossible) task of putting the country in lockdown and instituting martial law. What happened instead? Utter chaos. Rumself shocked everyone by pursuing a "light footprint" strategy going against the established Powell Doctrine of using overwhelming force to achieve your objectives. His failed strategy wasted four years. Nobody said that occuption would be easy but it shouldn't have been so hard either.
"Look, the fact of the matter is that the massive failures of the occuption as conducted by Donald Rumself came as a complete shock to everyone." That is false. A lot of people, including Barack Obama, Senator Chafee, Senator Kennedy, and more, saw what was coming. Rumsfeld is an ass, but the mission was flawed at a conceptual level and many people with an understanding of Iraqi politics saw this coming to some degree. More troops, more war, is not going to solve anything over there.
It was only a complete shock to you. All your Republican buddies in DC said it would be easy, even Darth Vader himself said so. They said it would take 6 months. You don't want me to find the quotes because it would be embarassing. Also, don't give factcheck. Did you go to fact check when George and the boys smeared Kerry? I didn't think so. One last thing. Why do you think Republicans have any interest in good government when they want to drown it in the bath tub?
Actually matthewcc, Obama himself in a statement after the war began that he was open to the idea of sending more troops to Iraq to get the situation under control. Please show me one statement where somebody predicted TACTICAL FAILURE by the most powerful military in the history of the world? By the way Obama is the guy who gave a speech in 2002 against the war, got to the senate and voted to fund the thing all the way until this election year and decided he'd cut off funding because he disagreed with the war from the start. That's the FAIRY TALE of his opposition. And Joe Kein, Senator John McCain stood up and defended his buddy against the swift boat attacks during the 2004 election.
Please show me one statement where somebody predicted TACTICAL FAILURE by the most powerful military in the history of the world? Specifically, look here: http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_archive.htm Billmon was writing about this too. Thanks for playing.
Oops, sorry eponymous I was wrong. There WAS people who predicted defeat as per your example from a Kossite and a former aide to Gary Hart. I guess I should have phrased my questions as: can you name ANY well known and respected commentator on military matters who predicted tactical failure and who isn't a flaming liberal who would predict Americans would lose against a fight with penguins? Thanks for playing too.
Jesse, the military actions are not where you find the tactical failures. Virtually every tactical goal set before them was accomplished, which I think is not surprising to many people. The problem is that no number of tactical victories for the military can compensate for the fundamental shortcomings of the strategic vision as set by the President and championed by his allies in his party (along with enablers like the Clintons) and in the media. You can blame Rumsfeld, but at the end of the day he was executing Bush's vision. And Bush's vision for turning the Middle East into a America-loving, democratic paradise through clumsy war-making was destined for total failure. The Surge and now The Pause (in bringing our men and women home to rest) aren't strategies for victory. They are delay tactics so Bush can sneak out of Washington so the next guy is stuck with the images of Americans being airlifted off of burning embassies.
It's a good argument. A little messy now, but they'll clean it up by fall. Especially with nice wads of cash coming from the eventual nominee. http://www.political-buzz.com/
Matthewcc, are you suggesting that victory is impossible in Iraq and we should surrender? It is my belief that the surge and a pause before further reductions as requested by Petraus ARE tactics that will lead to victory in another two or three years and the nearly complete withdrawal of combat troops other than those stationed in bases (if the Iraqis permit permanent bases). The idea is not to create a power vacuum when US forces leave. Doing so will surely cause catastrophic loss of life for the innocent people of Iraq. However, if the central government and the three ethnic groups have a substantial fighting force there will be no vacuum and no mass genocide and civil and regional war. The strategy has already been laid out to congress. Gradually those Iraqi units will take over and the war will come to a close.
"It is my belief that the surge and a pause before further reductions as requested by Petraus ARE tactics that will lead to victory in another two or three years and the nearly complete withdrawal of combat troops other than those stationed in bases (if the Iraqis permit permanent bases). " It is my belief that the moon is made out of cheese. Clearly, one of us must be right.
McCain...
"Matthewcc, are you suggesting that victory is impossible in Iraq and we should surrender?" I'm not Matthewcc, but I believe the Republicans in charge don't even know what the fuck victory in Iraq looks like. They've screwed things up so badly that the only way to come close to victory is to re-invade with 500,000 troops. Lay down martial law while they are there. And stay for however long it takes to rebuild the country, which would take a decade and a trillion dollars, at the very least. Problem is, there isn't 500,000 troops available. There isn't the money needed to rebuild Iraq. And the people of Iraq don't want the troops there for another year, never mind a decade. The Republicans lost the war in Iraq through their incompetence, it is simple as that. "The strategy has already been laid out to congress." And there is still no substantial sign of progress. How long should we give this plan before we declare it a failure?
C.S.Strowbridge, those of us who haven't jumped the shark and declared surrender because of Bush derangement syndrome still know what victory in Iraq looks like. It isn't pretty and it isn't as grand as anything Bush promised but its certainly doable. It will take pre-surge troop levels (100,000 not 500,000) for 2-3 years. Those troops will continue the fight against Al Quaeda as well as mentoring Iraqi army units to gain their own fighting capabilities. As those new Iraqi units come online US troops can be reduced to something like 40,000 in a non-combat role for the indefinite future - 100 years as McCain likes to say. By the way, "the republicans" won't be the ones losing anything. It was both parties who declared war and it was the majority of both parties, including Senators Obama and Clinton who repeatedly voted in favour of funding this war until this year. Make no mistake, it will be AMERICA that loses this war if we surrender. Now please, tell me what you think Iraq looks like if we follow Obama's plan to get out? I really don't think the Democrats have any idea at the chaos and bloodshed and horror that will emerge. It will be 10,000 times worse than Somalia.
Hmm, I wonder what Hillary was saying back in late 2002?
If the nominee is Obama, the DNC and its trashing of McCain can take a back seat, because (1) reasonable people already associate the Republican Party with failure in a number of areas and don't need to be reminded of their failures and (2) Obama has charisma and can carry a campaign that is primarily FOR him and not primarily AGAINST McCain. If Hillary wins the nomination, you will see (1) a more vicious version of her current attack campaign, but with the added obstacles of (2) (A) disaffected independent Obama supporters (like me) whom she would have thwarted with help from the DNC itself and (B) that half of the country that would never in a million years vote for her. In short, the DNC only needs a strategy if Hillary is the nominee. If Obama is nominated, all it has to do is open its checkbook and stay the hell out of his way.
Actually, as far as influential leaders predicting that invading Iraq would be a disaster... My husband is a Gulf War I vet and Dick Cheney (then Sec of Def) and Gen. Colin Powell pulled the troops back from going into Iraq instead of advancing because they both said publicly that invading Iraq would lead to failure. So, in the early 1990's, the two guys in charge of military operations in the Gulf (after President GHW Bush, of course) both predicted failure if we invaded Iraq to try to take out Saddam Hussein. However, George W. Bush wanted to go after the guy who tried to kill his daddy. And VP Dick Cheney's change of heart?
... and as to the idea of "victory" in Iraq, how many of you have studied the history of military occupations throughout the world? The principles of war dictate a commitment to being on the offense in order to succeed. The only thing military forces can be good at in the long run is offensive operations designed to destroy a well-defined enemy or his defensive position, supply lines, infrastructure, etc. Once you appreciate this point, you can begin to formulate a sensible policy regarding how you deploy your country's military forces. Unfortunately, it is a rare person on either side of this "debate" (and aparently not a single person besides Colin Powell who has served in the G.W. Bush administration) who understands it.
Brent Scowcroft had it right before the war, too. Here's his '02 column in a lefty rag called the Wall Street Journal. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133
I have always liked McCain, sometimes grudgingly, even when I disagree with him. But he is a pretty liberal republican. I like his immigration policy. I like his policy on reining in lobbiest. I like his basic decency. If I were forced to chose between McCain and Obama it would be simple. I would chose McCain. Obama has divided the democratic party into the kiddies who want to give our enemies a hug and the grownups who want to give our enemies a timeout. Clinton is a realist. McCain is a realist. Clinton and McCain may differ on how to keep America safe and strong but at least they share the same agenda.
W.A.:
Once a brave man now McCain has become a coward. He walks on a Baghdad street claiming it is very very safe while he is surrounded by thousands of soldiers and helicopters. How can this man sleep at night while sending thousands of our young kids to die in a war that was started on fraudulent grounds? McCain is a very very old man who is a hot headed war-monger who routinely uses "F" word while referring to his republican colleagues. I do not want such a unqualified man anywhere around the WH.
Hello, Marc, commenters- my two cents: The real question, to me, is whether national security or the economy is going to be the central issue of the campaign. I do not understand why Democrats would want to engage McCain on his best terrain, which is Iraq and the war on terrorism... It would seem much more to their advantage to engage on the economy and the related issue of health care...
The Democrats are on the horns of a vicious dilemma. They are running on the Peace Now platform. Same as in 1972. McCain will run on Victory at all costs, because it's the only card he has to play. Now the American people have an innate understanding about how Peace Now works out. The last time we tried Peace Now, we got the Boat People and the Cambodian Genocide. Republicans, wisely, run on Peace through Strength and Victory. Democrats don't because Democrats haven't won a war since 1945 and have forgotten how to actually win. A Democratic Administration would have a hard time beating the Carmelite Nuns, primarily because their elites were so shattered by what Vo Nguyen Giap did to them in 1968 that they have accepted the notion of military defeat as an acceptable alternative. This never happened to Republicans. We don't accept defeat the way Democrats do. Our experience of Vietnam was Nixon's Christmas Bombing of Hanoi. That's the way we solve problems. Democrats hated the Christmas Bombing. We saw the Christmas Bombing as a good days' work. You'll notice that Tricky Dick and Henry got the North Vietnamese to put pen to paper and put an end to Lyndon Johnson's ridiculous Asian war. So it was natural that Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi should have been beaten like rented mules by an Al Qaeda bombing offensive in 2006. They expected the Democrats to fold like a cheap card table, and they did. To Democrats, Iraq wasn't a serious foreign policy issue so much as it was a repeat of the great foreign policy failure of the Democratic Party: Vietnam. So, the Party Leaders, most of whom came out of the legal apparatus that came out of the Peace Movement, reacted accordingly-they sued for peace and were ready to ask for terms from the Iranians and, indirectly, Al Qaeda. However, they did not expect Bush to hold his nerve and react with the surge. Democrats also did not expect the surge to work and Al Qaeda to be virtually annihilated in Iraq. Democrats bet against the U.S. Army and Marines. That was a bad bet. However, the Democrats are about as principled on these issues as Ahmadhi-Nejad when asked to study the Talmud, so they prefer to argue about Who Shot John in 2003. This thread is a great piece of evidence in that regard. Everyone is arguing about 2003. Voters don't care about 2003. They care about victory or defeat. Democrats don't get this...yet. Republicans lost their mojo between 2004 and 2006 precisely because Bush listened to Rumsfeld's "let's muddle through" vision of how to fight and did not produce victory. In 2005, he tried to talk about Social Security in the middle of a Qaedist Bombing Campaign. Republican Voters and Indies expected victory, NOT defeat. We were on the cusp of defeat in 2006, so it's natural that Democrats won, and handily. But the Democratic victory was not a vote to lose. Americans don't like to lose wars, but they don't like wars without objectives, either-Democrats do not get this. Democrats think that losing is acceptable. They just don't get why Petraeus' success has taken Iraq off the front-burner. However, my liberal friends, it's 2008, not 2003, and no amount of bitching about George W. Bush will alter that fact. It is a Democratic tide this year. Obama, if he is the nominee, should win. McCain and his VP will argue that as a great power, we have no choice but to proceed with the surge as planned and a phased, careful withdrawl over the next four years. Obama will lie to his voters and run on a "Peace in Our Time" platform that he already knows he cannot fulfill. McCain is the only candidate who is actually telling the truth here. If he's elected, Obama will be sat down like the fine young lad that he is and be told, in no uncertain terms, by Brezezinski, and Kissinger, and Token Republican Cabinet Member Colin Powell, and Scowcroft, and Bill Clinton (his new Secretary of State, you heard it here first) and Holbrooke and be told that no, we can't pull out in a year. Maybe four years, maybe five, and we'll take consistent, monthly casualties on the way out, Mr. President. Sorry, but that's Vietnamization for you. On that day, it will truly suck to be a member of the Reality Based Community. You people will wake up and realize that you had been lied to all along, and not by Chimpy, but by your own people. And poor Barack won't have GW around to shield him from the Anger of the Kos: Dubya will be back in Texas. Great Powers do not run away from small time thugs like the Qaedists just because their base voters in the Reality Based Community want them to. Barack will come to understand this, if only because he will find it in the National Interest to avoid a larger war between Iran and Israel in the near future. This just is what it is. This is what happens to people who run on Peace Now and expect a planet run by the vicious, the ambitious, and the genocidal to conform to their Bo-Peep vision of the world. Peace through Strength, baby. Worked for Reagan. Were I Barack, I'd be praying for the health of John McCain.
Commonsense its going to be easy to win in November if leftists like you try to smear a national hero like McCain. Its universally agreed that the one thing McCain IS NOT is a coward. "How can this man sleep at night while sending thousands of our young kids to die in a war that was started on fraudulent grounds?" I don't know if he does sleep at night because he probably worries about his own two sons fighting in Iraq. That's right - your old "chicken hawk" arguement isn't going to work anymore. McCain knows war, McCain hates war but make no mistake, this was a NESSECARY war.
After all is said and done I think the American people will agree that McCain's strong suit is national defense. I say that as a liberal who would much rather he not be president. I know that polls prefer democrats to republicans on both domestic and military issues right now but I believe when the time comes to vote things will change. McCain will win the security issue against Obama. Obama will be tied to his rebelious Kenyan cousins, to his muslim sympathies, to his semi-racist black church, to his Rezko sleaze connection and more. Against Clinton though McCain would have a harder time. She has experience on foriegn policy issues and has a reputation for a steel spine when it comes to standing up to her enemies. If the public thinks her enemies are the same as Americas enemies McCain is going to have some trouble with her.
Obama will win all the states Gore won in 2000, plus Ohio, Missouri, and possibly Georgia and a few states in the Great Plains. McCain will be a more competitive candidate than the Democrats anticipate, even though he will lose the election. But he will be more competitive because there is in fact more daylight between McCain and Bush than partisans on the Left would like to allow. That said, McCain's verbal presentation in 2008 is much, much weaker than it was in 2000. He is in for a rough time on the campaign trail after Summer ends. I believe he will get bruised very badly in the debates not only with Obama, but in public appearances. In addition to his previous habit of making off-color jokes, hyperbolic gaffes, and other emotional eruptions--he now adds a touch of aged-ness to the problem. I'm an Independent who, if Hillary were the Nominee, would give the eventual McCain ticket a very, very fair hearing in my own mind, and in my ultimate decision on whom to vote for. But it's doubtful, very doubtful I would vote for him in the end. I agree however that only McCain is presenting Iraq now as a new problem of Withdrawal. To get me to consider him more, he would need to drop further his position that the war was correct from the start (it wasn't--the Iraq War presented no strategic opportunity for the USA as has been proven)and run harder on the fact that the landscape now is, what it is. Hillary, Obama, McCain--they will all have an exceedingly hard time with Iraq regardless of what they "say they want to do". The pressure to NOT withdraw will be enormous. I want to hear all the candidates now say that withdrawal brings new risks, and to the extent McCain is the only one mentioning this make me favorable towards him. I would challenge Obama and Clinton therefore to at least make the case that NOT withdrawing brings risk. Democrats should at least acknowledge that there is currently more completeness in the McCain position--even if you totally disagree with it.
|
Subscribe to this blog by Email Twitter || On Facebook || QIK Live Channel  Recent Posts
Monthly Archives
|
| 
Copyright © 2008 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Obama's money quotes earlier today:
"He is the past and we are the future."
"We are the party of tomorrow and he is the party of yesterday."
"John McCain wants 50, 60, 100 more years in Iraq."
Tie him to Bush and make him a relic of the past. It won't be close. The democrats will end up with 57 seats in the senate and over 250 seats in the house with Obama v. McCain.
http://www.politicalinaction.com
Posted by Brian | February 11, 2008 8:21 PM