(early August 2008)
John McCain was wholeheartedly behind the surge strategy, and indeed earlier than most, but unfortunately for him he was also wholeheartedly behind the invasion of Iraq in the first place. In selling the surge as a success the war in Iraq had also been sold as one. The goals that have been achieved are provisional -- a reduction in violence and improved stability in wider parts of the country.
Terrorism in Iraq is a waning but not a spent force. Incidents still run at about 200 a week DOD report June 2008. Inevitably there has been a reaction of the Iraqi populace to the bloody minded fanaticism that overstepped itself enough to transcend numerous U.S. mistakes and the presence of foreign troops in a country in which nationalism is perhaps the more potent for the civil structure of the society being so marginal for so long. This does not suggest Iraq is about to become a stable democracy or a dry docked aircraft carrier for American forces in the War on Terror©.
What does longer term success mean? There are nearly 5 million displaced Iraqis (1) and the child malnutrition rate rose 47% (2) by 2008 from already high levels during the pre-invasion sanctions regime. Success also requires basic political stability-- agreement among the inhabitants as to the structure of their government and then time in which it could be shown to work. These things can be achieved by the U.S. military. But if they are not achieved what can U.S. action be said to have gained?
As much as McCain has overvalued the results of the surge he has also played up the possible instability if the U.S. withdraws. These issues-- internal and regional-- are not to be taken lightly. But the warning was out there before the invasion-- 'you break it, you own it'-- and was laughed off. This sort of geopolitical ignorance does not bode well. Do the people who created the mess really get to use it as an argument for their policies, which are basically more of the same?
Left unsaid is the objective of Iraq as a long term partner in the neocon crusade. It is only small credit to McCain to say that his 100 years remark was not based on the current situation. His idea is that our presence there would become similar to that in Korea and Germany. This seems more like sympathetic magic than a concept. But then from McCain's neocon perspective, as articulated in his 2002 speech in the Senate on the Force Authorization bill, American values are universal ones that "all people have a right to enjoy." McCain stated a wish that the greater Middle East 'progress' toward those values; hostility to U.S. values and interests is a by-product of dictatorial opposition to the United States. (And McCain actually did say that the Iraqis would be glad to see U.S. troops.) None of this inspires confidence in his ability as a realistic strategic thinker.
In McCain's 2002 speech there were also the obligatory warnings about Saddam's WMD-- nuclear and biological -- and ties to al Qaeda, all supposedly supported by intelligence. In fact, as the Department of Defense's Inspector General noted in 2007: "We found that the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy developed, produced and disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on Iraq-al Qaeda relations, which included conclusions inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, and these were presented to senior decision makers," he said. [Article] That Undersecretary would have been Douglas Feith. McCain was the preferred candidate of neocons in 2000, when Bush ran more or less as an isolationist. His current foreign policy adviser is Randy Scheunemann, a board member of the neocon Project for a New American Century, former Ahmed Chalabi associate, and cheerleader for the Iraq War. Along with Feith's work, the spectrum of pre-war assertions regarding Iraq's activities is covered in various Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reports.
McCain has attempted to explain this away by claiming that, "I do know that every intelligence agency in the world, some of the intelligence agencies not representing nations that are particularly friendly to us, firmly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was developing them." This remark appeared not once but at least three times. First on Meet the Press May 13, 2007; then in response to former Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book in late May 2008 and a week later in Newsweek in response to the Intelligence Committee report. He included French and German intelligence agencies in his census but the Germans were shocked when Bush invoked information from a source they controlled, codenamed "Curveball" by the Americans, considering him a serial liar and mentally unstable. Yet much of the information about Iraq's allege bioweapons activities came from him. The LA Times noted, "At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion." The French had studied issues of Iraq's attempts to buy uranium from Niger, a former colony. The French DGSE-- equivalent of our CIA-- repeatedly investigated and repeatedly warned the CIA. Retired French intelligence official Alain Chouet characterized the information presented to bolster the Bush administration claim as "bullshit." (Chicago Tribune, Dec 11, 2005; based on material from the Los Angeles Times.)
It would be one thing if McCain had simply been slipped a mickey, as LBJ was by the Gulf of Tonkin incident-- intelligence subversion cooked up at low levels that filtered upwards. The CIA, French, and German information all came out after the war began. But notice McCain's remarks date from 2007-8. Yet even in 2003 there was no unanimity among U.S. intelligence agencies. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's Chief of Staff at State, has said "I unknowingly participated in a hoax on the American people." The single most disturbing thing about McCain may be his enabling attitude to subversion of the government from within. Watergate was a disturbing but essentially partisan operation; Iran Contragate, as something originated within the government, was far worse but oddly received less attention; subversion of intelligence to create the Iraq War came from within the highest levels of government yet and it was part and parcel of a much wider effort at the political subversion of information gathering and policy advising agencies.
In Foreign Affairs (November/December) 2007 McCain outlined his vision for America. He noted remarks by Hamilton and Truman that America is special place that was "created for a purpose" and which must serve "a cause greater than self-interest." In the opening paragraphs it is clear that for McCain the purpose lies abroad. America as such is taken for granted and so its citizens are fodder for national grandeur.
He also notes near the beginning that "there will be no time for on the job training." At the time of his 2002 speech, McCain had served 23 years in the Navy and had 19 years in Washington, mostly in the Senate. He does not seem at any point to have acquired a practically based strategic vision. His lessons from the military are the technical ones of a mid-level officer and his approach since around 2000 has been dominated by neocon ideology.