McCain: We'll Look Back On Iraq As An 'Academic Argument'

[via Democracy Arsenal] John McCain, appearing on the Hardball College Tour, didn't shy away from making his now-familiar case on why he will be a different president than George W. Bush. He made some effective distinctions - nothing you haven't heard before - on the issues of global warming and torture. He's against it! But more critical to his argument is his opposition to the way in which Bush handled the Iraq war initially:

MCCAIN: The war was mishandled terribly for nearly four years by Donald Rumsfeld and this administration. I fought against it. I argued against. And I argued for the new strategy, which is succeeding. It's long and hard and tough. We just passed not that long ago the 4,000th brave young American who was sacrificed in this conflict. But I believe that the strategy is succeeding.

Critically, however, McCain's willingness to scrutinize these failures do not go so far as to analyze the underlying strategic decision to go to war with Iraq at all, a decision that has greatly benefited the larger al Qaeda organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You remember those guys, right? One major disputant of McCain's foreign policy, Senator Joe Biden - who Matthews invokes in his exchange with McCain - sure does! As does Ambassador Ryan Crocker himself.

But for McCain, the whole matter of whether we would have been better off actually working to defeat the terrorist organization that attacked the United States as opposed to launching an costly military distraction in Iraq is a concern best left for tweedy types to discuss at their chummy leisure:

MCCAIN: We can look back at the past and argue about whether we should have gone to war or not, whether we should have invaded or not, and that's a good academic argument.

I can think of about four thousand people that will have no opportunity to attend that lecture.

[WATCH.]

Comments

[onedivasinger]

Not just a jerk, but an old jerk. Ask the families of the innocent dead, our soldiers, their families, the American people who have paid the cost for Iraq and the millions of others worldwide, if this is an academic exercise. How can these people wake up and look at themselves in the mirror in the morning is beyond me. Vote for McCain and you absolutely deserve more war, and more strife. And don't think that this time because you are the "majority" that you will be somehow exempt from the pain. Look around your pretty little suburban neighborhoods. They are being foreclosed on. Look at your SUVs. Can you still afford the gas? Your 401ks will be gone soon. Your kids can't afford college either. Sure, things look good poolside right now...but the republicans only know 2 things...the same refrain they have been singing for years! Tax cuts and war. How's that going for you?

[Brebro]

What a Jackass! Why would anyone be so blind as to think this puppet would be a good choice for our next President of the United States? Is it because they are Republicans and they refuse to vote outside of their party? C'mon it's time to vote for the best person, McCain is so in the pocket of special interest groups and Hillary? Well, need I say anything?

[uscitizen]

Quite a dismissive remark considering the price paid with blood and money.

[pearbrandy]

McCain: We already have a very good idea of what people will think of Iraq 100 years from now, because we know it already:

Take the view held globally about Vietnam today - the 100s of thousands of lost lives and the experience of returning veterans and the devastation of agent orange on generations of Vietnamese people, then remove even the smallest ideological pretext for going to war in the first place (regardless of how stupid it was then) and replace the reason for going to war with an outright lie, perpetrated by government. Oh - and I forgot to mention - you fail completely in your mission because it was fundamentally flawed from the outset. No amount of tinkering or 'surges' can undo it. In fact, you've created a conflict where none existed - providing further reason for militants in the Middle East to hate America and creating a fertile breeding ground for ever more terrorists who grow up in a climate of war, brutality, fear and lies - their country ruined. Meanwhile the 'real' conflict - the actual source of the problem - Afghanistan - is ignored, grows and comes to haunt you forever.

[mamacat]

I will never forget the smiling face of my friend Leonard, killed in Vietnam.
I am still haunted by the otherworldly, ghostly expression on the face of my friend Harold, who came back deeply injured in body and soul.
I will always remember my friend John. When I knocked on his barracks door after he came back, he slid out of his bunk, straight under his bed, and looked up at me like a very frightened animal. He had seen too many of his friends burn to death in Vietnam, and was still in shock.

Today, I wear clothes made in Vietnam. Was it worth my friends' suffering so that I could buy cheap clothes made in a third world country that was never a threat to American security? What value did that war have, other than to make rich the companies that supplied the needed materiel?
At least in that war, there were not as many mercenaries as in today's war, getting obscenely rich off of the death and suffering of innocents.

I do not hate the Vietnamese for what happened to my friends. If I hate anything, it is the blundering politicians and military leaders who let this happen to our people, and to the Vietnamese.

[GrouchoMarxist]

And we'll discuss McCain's run for the White House as a Quixotic Gesture.

[helonias]

Perhaps he could read about Napoleon in Spain

[poppycock]

So presumably our soldiers are ony "theoretically" dead

[mari2JJ]

Sounds about like McCain, eh? Imagine someone discussing the Iraq invasion in a "theoretical" way, given that it was started on a pack of lies, it has caused thousands of Iraqi deaths, it has decimated the Iraq economy, it is bankrupting our country, it has been used to prop up this disgusting Bush administration for the last 7 years, AND most of all it has caused the horror of the death of so many of our best and brightest young people. Additionally, it has strained our military capabilities to the limit, and placed huge burdens on military families while Bush et al calmly yak about how wonderful the Iraq war is going. Definitely time to get rid of this crew in office now and God help us if we elect someone who thinks of this illegal Iraq war as an "academic argument". You have to be totally out of touch with reality to say some stupid thing like that. Wonder if McCain gave any thought about how that comment would affect a grieving wife and mother who now has the family SHE is alone responsible for?

[oldcitizen]

For the sake of "academic argument", what does John McCain offer that inspires hope and confidence? How important to him are the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution? Does he champion limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, basic rights and freedoms for all Americans, or just those of his wealthy wife and others in her/his privileged social class? How honest is his claim to having great knowledge and experience in foreign affairs when he obviously doesn't know the most basic facts about the global Islamic culture? Does he really have "sound judgment" when his knee jerk solution is to "bomb, bomb, bomb away" or he often lets his "hot temper" control his actions? Does McCain really have critical intellectual skills or is he just arrogant, ignorant, irrational, illusory, credulous, and inept like the current President? What does McCain's domestic policy offer most Americans other than nostalgia for "good old days" that never were; wishful thinking about the way things might be but aren't today; or "voodoo economics" which has resulted in wealth "flooding up" rather than "trickling down"? Finally, what is new or inspiring about McCain's foreign policy? To me, its the same old politics of fear: bluff and bully, scare and smear, flood the airways with propaganda based on greed, lies, old wives tales, the bogey man, howling politicians and/or preachers predicting death, destruction and eternal doom? "Bitter?" Damn right I'm bitter - and voting for Obama!

[CarolinaDem]

New rule:
if your decision to go to war is so incoherent
that it turns into an academic issue whether it was right,

you don't get to be re elected to anything anytime ever.

[NovaB]

Academic argument? Do you really want to tell the families of over 4,000 dead Americans they died for an academic exercise? Was this one for extra credit or what?

Didn't America learn anything from Vietnam? Change that to "Didn't America learn anything after the Nixon and Reagan debacles?"

[helonias]

Define "we"

[DELICIOUS]

MCCAIN ALREADY SHOWING SIGNS OF DEMENTIA. HE HAS TO BE NUTS OR JUST BLANK IN THE MIND TO MAKE SUCH AN UNFAIR AND MISGUIDED STATEMENT.

[Witchitalineman]

"Academic Argument" - give me a break. Tell that to the families of our women and men who have given their lives for this travesty of a war!

[PaMike]

None of us will be alive to look back at the Iraq War in 100 years. WTF!

[batgirlevi]

There is nothing 'academic' about knowing our country was lied to and went into Iraq to get the oil.

[winoohno]

and we didn't even get the oil. The Iraqis are building up a nice budget surplus while we are spending BILLIONS there -- training, rebuilding and reconstructing their country.

[batgirlevi]

That's what happens when bush/cheney/rummy and condi the most incompetent lying dumb shits on the planet get together.

They all need to go to jail.