After John McCain's victory in Florida, I couldn't help but wonder how McCain, who has consistently out "nine-elevened" Rudy G on the campaign trail by decrying "islamo-facists" at every breakfast, lunch and dinner, straight-talked his way to victory. After all, this is the same John McCain who told New Hampshire voters that he could see American troops staying in Iraq for "... maybe a hundred years" as long as American casualities were not part of the bargain (think of post war Japan, Korea, Germany, etc.). Here I thought the American people were tired of the war in Iraq.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS!!! Hey, even Bin Laden can't live that long!
The last Hundred Years' War was a conflict between France and England (116 years to be exact) from 1337-1453 and is a distant mirror on what McCain has in mind in his expected protracted struggle to militarily defeat those "islamo-facists."
I guess it must stoke the patriotic fantasies in Republican voters' hearts to hear McCain talk convincingly about "victory" in Iraq when everyone, I mean everyone, including no less than his hero, General Petraeus, avoids that word like the plague. The "victory" bar is so low now that no one can define what that means anymore.
But the surge that McCain so vociferously supports cannot be sustained much beyond next April.
What then, John? Even you won't be Commander in Chief until next January 21.
With General "G.I. Joe" Lieberman in his foxhole, McCain envisions a U.S. troop presence in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East at levels that actually may undermine the very war against "Islamo-facism" that he intends to wage. The next president, whether or not be a President McCain, will inevitably face a Middle East on the verge of a post-colonial autocratic era where a new generation of autocratic Islamists will hold increasing sway over the levers of power in their Arab countries -- Islamists (whether Sunni or Shiite) who oppose the presence of American troops in the Middle East.
One of the most important decisions facing the next president is how many troops to maintain in Iraq and how to accelerate their departure (something that McCain obviously cares less about). Gen. Petraeus and his team are trying to figure that one out. That debate about future troop levels will surely resume in earnest when Petraeus, along with Amb. Ryan Crocker, provide their next report to Congress in early April.
One thing is for certain. John McCain is in less of hurry than George Bush to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
And those troops are still fighting and dying in northern Iraq every day. From a purely military vantage point the surge has undeniably had a positive impact on the level of violence in Baghdad and Anbar Province. However, the city of Mosul has become "terror central" and US and Iraqi troops are now fighting, booby-trapped house by booby-trapped house, to do in Mosul what they successfully have accomplished in most of Baghdad's neighborhoods,
And then what McCain?
What will the Iraqi Government do to reconcile its pathetic differences?
What sort of Status of Forces Agreement will be negotiated with this feeble Iraqi Government?
Will the troop surge enable the return of millions of Iraqis who are refugees in neighboring countries?
What are you going to do about Iran and Syria... start a war with them, as well?
I have a million questions that McCain has nonchalantly avoided answering because "victory" is so sweet a word.
The American people deserve some honest to goodness straight talk from John McCain on Iraq and the Middle East. For all the trips he has made to Iraq to visit our troops (nothing wrong with that), he still has yet to lay out to the American people a coherent, credible success strategy to achieve a "timely" drawdown of troops in Iraq and a Middle East policy worthy of a presidential candidate of his "experience" that does more than merely rale against islamo-facists.
See you in a Hundred Years.