An AP story available here on MSN and headlines "McCain: US can win Iraq war within four years," leads off like this:
John McCain, looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees "spasmodic" but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his ready veto pen.Tell us, oh great wizard, what else you see in your crystal ball! A chicken in every pot? A money tree in every yard? A world in which fairies are saved from death if only we all clap our hands and truly believe?The Republican presidential contender also envisions April's annual angst replaced with the option of a simpler flat tax, illegal immigrants living humanely under a temporary worker program, and political partisanship driven by weekly news conferences and British-style question periods with joint meetings of Congress.
A bit later in the article, McCain denied that by suggesting the war would be won in 4 years he was setting a timetable for troop withdrawls:
"It's not a timetable; it's victory. It's victory, which I have always predicted," McCain said. "I'm not putting a date on it. It could be next month, it could be next year, it could be three years from now."Despite the fact that this is an election season, and I shouldn't be surprised by the unmitigated gall that a candidate will demonstrate in his (or her) quest for victory, this still chaps my ass. What evidence can McCain produce - what plan towards "victory" - that would suggest that the next four years will be any different in Iraq than the previous five have been? When I put on my flowing robes and gaze into my crystal ball, I see our occupation of Iraq stretching on unimpeded for at least another forty years. This has not been a war that could be won for at least four and a half years; it has long been a responsibility we must endure or a disaster we must remedy. It's not World War II or even Vietnam - it is, I think, Korea and we are on the long road not to victory but to interminable and uneasy stalemate. Any man who seeks to be president and sees victory coming from that morass is either a deeply deluded Pollyanna or criminally stupid.
Speaking of World War II, consider President Bush's recent remarks on those who would "appease" terrorists:
In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."This is all so ridiculous it's almost not even worth mentioning, but in honor of my current sojourn in Germany I just couldn't let it slide. Why - oh why? - I must ask does everything political argument almost always have to boil down to how much of a Nazi you are? It's not unlike the goat digression: as I think I have mentioned before, every argument against gay marriage always comes down to the poor goat. If we allow two men or women to marry, the naysayer asks, what's to stop someone from marrying a goat? If our first inclination with regard to terrorism and its causes is not to bomb the sons of bitches into oblivion and ask questions later, Bush argues, then we're only steps away from pencil thin mustaches, goose-stepping and gas chambers. If I must make the point again, I will: Iraq is far from World War II. America no longer has the luxury of a war that allows for simple distinction between good and evil. And such "with us or against us" reasoning does little to aid in the war or its resolution.
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