Jonah Goldberg has a great point in today’s LA Times:
McCain heroically pushed for the surge when the war was at its most unpopular point. Even more impressive, he favored a change in strategy back when the war was popular.
Within months of the invasion, McCain was calling for more troops and the head of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Later, when the Iraqi civil war erupted, Al Qaeda in Iraq metastasized and the Iranians mounted a clandestine surge all their own, McCain doubled-down; he argued that we couldn’t afford to lose and proposed a revised counterinsurgency strategy for victory. That was the same very month that Obama introduced the “Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.”
That’s all great stuff for McCain’s biographers. But the tragic Catch-22 for the Arizona senator is that the more the surge succeeds, the more politically advantageous it is for Obama.
Being right about the past gets the Arizona senator nothing because it’s retrospective. Past performance is not only no guarantee of future returns in politics, it’s backwards-looking when people are voting for their future. Obama on the other hand is immunized from the effects of his previous wrongheadedness by the diminishing importance of Iraq on the national scene. Iraq is yesterday’s news.
Reagan’s victory in the Cold War made the presidency of foreign policy novice Bill Clinton possible. History repeats itself.*
Yes, but this time around it will be a most tragic farce, I fear…
Why will it be a tragic farce? By McCain’s own words we have “succeeded” in Iraq. So the problem with McCain is that most Americans, including myself equate success with being to extricate ourselves from a country we have no business being in anyway. Seems to me-given all the rhetoric abut Iraqi progress means this language is insulting to the Iraqis if you ask me.
Second, is Iraq getting better and if it is-Americans want out. They are smarter than people give them credit for and see through the smoke and mirrors of trying to say Iraq is somehow like being in Japan or Germany. Obama is able to channel that.
Maliki’s call for us to leave Iraq should be viewed as an “opportunity” to begin doing just that, and get back to finishing one war at a time. Most importantly a withdrawal along the lines of what Malaki has stated will make it clear that the United States seeks no permanent bases in Iraq.
John McCain comes across as if he wants that-and the rest of the Arab world does not want that whatsoever.
Good article.
Funny though, it reminds me of this article
http://checkswithchart.com/2008/07/15/two-sides-same-coin/
That’s right. Shameless self-plug. I apologize in advance.
I think Bubba’s victory in 92 was due to a fellow named Ross Perot and George senior not knowing the cost of bread or milk.