McCain: 100 years in Iraq
This is pretty breathtaking:
McCain would have no problem being in Iraq for another 100 years? Really? That is, in a word, insane. He does say thats only if American troops are not being injured, harmed or killed but still, the Arab world isn’t going to like even the hint of that idea one bit, not to mention Americans.
Yglesias has this right:
Nevertheless, not even George W. Bush is nearly so cavalier and irresponsible as to make the kind of remarks McCain is saying here. Bush, it seems, has advisors who know something about the diplomatic situation. Bush has even spoken personally with heads of state and other officials throughout the Arab world. Bush, in short, recklessless and immature though he may be still knows that it plays very very very poorly in the Arab world for American leaders to run around talking about 100 year occupations of Iraq.
I was actually in the audience. I heard the guy challenge McCain on the war. I knew McCain was going to push back. But his style of reply was astonishing. When the questioner asked about Bush’s plans to keep us in Iraq 50 years, McCain literally interrupted him with a Monty Python-esque “What about 100?…That would be fine with me.” He may as well have adopted a British accent and said, “50 years? 50 years!? That’s for cowards and fools. I’llt take your 50 years and double it — nay! Triple it! — good sir.” And if the questioner had been able to keep going, it wouldn’t have been long before McCain hit infinity plus 100, which I think might be the right formulation in the Republican race.
And finally Matthew Duss:
America simply cannot afford to have as president a man so utterly clueless about the nature of Islamism, and how so much of its appeal lies in its ethic of resistance to Western encroachment, as to blithely suggest that the U.S. stay in Iraq for “a hundred years.” The last seven have shown how much damage to America’s interests can be wrought by a president who wandered aimlessly into imperialism. I think we really don’t want to find out how much can be wrought by a president who embraces it wholeheartedly.
Duss calls this McCain’s “Macaca moment”, in reference to former Senator George Allen’s racist comment during his Virginia senate race but sadly I think Duss is wrong. It is much more acceptable in Washington to have a war, more war, most war foreign policy then it is to be racist. Not to mention the Washington media has a gigantic crush on McCain, as anyone who watched MSNBC last night surely saw.
I have no problem with McCain’s response. As he said America maintains a presence in many different parts of the world and has done so for years. If our goal is to make Iraq as stable as possible, to the point where it is a free and democratic society, why should we remove all American presence from a safe non-hostile area? Especially given the fact that without any American presence Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups could have an opportunity to re-destablize the region. I think we have to look past the emotional idea that we want all of our troops home and approach the situation in Iraq in a more logical and practical way. This is what McCain has done in both his support of The Surge as well as his comments on Jan 3.
Well, I don’t claim to understand US foreign policy in the slightest, especially when the biggest threat is China’s phenomenal growth while the US has gone bankrupt coping with post 9/11. Monty Python would be even prouder of that!
ADG