The bottom line has already been written on this one a while back-the January 4 New Yorker, in fact, when Hendrik Hertzberg wrote:
"...what the context shows, I think, is that yanking that sound bite out of context isn't really all that unfair. McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.
"He'll see your fifty years and raise you fifty. But the cards are blank."
And that's the thing. Perhaps even more damning than how long McSame is willing to stay there-he has no frikken clue what he's going to do there! There is no plan. Zip! Nada! Nothing! We just stay there until everyone shooting at us runs out of bullets.
Unfortunately, of course, they're mostly using IEDs and such, and it doesn't look like they're going to run out anytime soon. But... details, details.
And this very same point is what Dday ends up writing about in the bowels of his current comment, four months almost to the day after Hertzberg's piece:
the bottom line is, as Ron Brownstein notes in an excellent piece, McCain hasn't explained what all those troops would be doing in Iraq, and how long he'd be willing to keep combat forces there until such a peaceful presence would be reached.
First, if McCain doesn't envision a 100-year American front-line combat presence in Iraq, how long is he willing to keep U.S. forces in that role? So far, all he has said is that the United States should withdraw only if it concludes that the Iraq mission is unachievable or when it has achieved success, which he defines as the establishment of "a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state." [...]
McCain has not said when, but he has pledged that Iraqi units will eventually assume the major combat responsibility. That prompts the next question McCain should address: What would then become the mission for the U.S. forces he wants to maintain in Iraq? McCain hasn't specified. But he has suggested that their job would be to deter external aggression, much as in South Korea where our troops "served as a buffer against invasion from North Korea."
In that example, however, the U.S. and South Korea agreed that North Korea posed a threat. The American troop presence in Germany and Japan long rested on a similar agreement about the potential danger from the Soviet Union, notes Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow in foreign policy.
Although the U.S. considers Iran the most pressing external danger to Iraq, "the overwhelming majority of Iraqis don't see Iran as a threat," Daalder says. "They see it as a partner." If a threat from Iran isn't the motivation, Al Qaeda might provide the most likely justification for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. But if Al Qaeda remains a threat there, conditions would likely not meet McCain's standard that American troops are no longer at risk. McCain and the RNC's explanation is gobbledygook, and while a significant portion of the traditional media has lapped it up, Brownstein raises the crucial questions. McCain wouldn't have combat forces leave Iraq until it was stable, and won't say what would meet the standard of stability, so until he does, it's natural to assume he would spend 100 years there or more trying to find the pony.
Or maybe the pony is the wrong thing to focus on. Maybe it's Tinker Bell. Maybe it's just a matter of believing in fairies hard enough and everything will just sort itself out like a Disney movie.
And maybe, just maybe, that's John McSame's answer to just about everything: Firm, decisive statements that don't bear any real relationship to accomplishing anything. Unless, of course, you believe hard enough, so that Tinker Bell doesn't die, in which case we all live happily ever after!
Of course! How could I forget! That's how he'll end the fighting in Iraq!
"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit.'"
Just him and Tinker Bell.
And that's also how cutting $65 billion in earmarks can solve our budget crisis, even while we spend several times that in Iraq (never mind the long term costs that already reach up to $3 trillion, and would increase by that much more under McCain's best-case scenario), but not cut any of the important earmark programs that pesky real life people say have helped save their lives--like the woman at Lehigh Valley Hospital with ovarian cancer who was treated in a clinical trial funded with $80 million in congressional earmarks. Or even aid to Israel.
Oh, and by the way, it's not $65 billion in earmarks he'll cut, but $18 billion. But he'll still cut the deficit, and cure cancer, too! So long as you believe and keep Tinker Bell alive!
That's how eliminating the gas tax will put money in consumers' pockets, even though the gas companies can just raise the price and add the difference to their already astronomical windfall profits.
That's how making Bush's tax cuts permanent will fix the economy-and the mega-deficits-that Bush gave us in the first place. (Really, I need a link for this?)
In short, when you get right down to it, there's a striking consistency to all of John McCain's "solutions" to the problems we face-just like McBush before him they are all fundamentally faith-based.
Only this time, the faith is in fairies!
 | | "I can smell
the fairy dust!
I really,
really,
really
can!" |
|
