It's been over five years, 4000 dead U.S. troops and $600 billion since we invaded Iraq. But Sen. John McCain thinks it doesn't matter how long we end up staying in that war-ravaged country. The GOP's presumptive nominee appeared Wednesday morning on NBC's Today show in an interview with co-host Matt Lauer, who asked the Republican candidate about President Bush's troop surge last year which McCain has vehemently supported:
Lauer: If it's working, Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?
McCain: No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That's all fine.
So the crusty old Senator from Arizona thinks it's "not too important" when, if ever, our troops return home, huh? That an overwhelming majority of Americans want an imminent end to the war apparently doesn't faze McCain. As he's said in the past, we could be in Iraq for another 100+ years and that would be just peachy with him.
McCain's new boneheaded remark ranks among the other colossal Bushevik blunders pertaining to Iraq such as "Mission Accomplished" and "We'll be greeted as liberators." It only serves to demonstrate just how out out of touch he is with mainstream America.
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presumptive nominee, would be wise to aggressively hammer home this new example of McCain's consistently cavalier attitude towards the war and our foreign policy in general. It's just more of the same shoot first, ask questions later reckless cowboy mentality that has gotten us mired in the Iraq debacle in the first place. And we certainly don't need four more years of Bush 3 in the form of McCain.
Americans have a very clear choice this November. A vote for McCain is a vote for more war, more militarism, more death. And that's just Iraq. Imagine the surprises this war-monger has in store for us with Iran. As Yogi Berra said, it'll be "deja vu all over again."