Last week AP reported, "John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding."
McCain's strategy for doing that is "helpfully" provided by Fred and Kimberly Kagan at the Weekly Standard. They wrote The Patton of Counterinsurgency in the current issue.
According to the Kagans, not only is the war in Iraq a success, the commanders in Iraq are military geniuses at the level of Caesar and Napoleon.
This is the essential Rove strategy: Take your major weakness and turn it around to be your major strength. I believe McCain will adopt this narrative, and I believe it has an excellent chance to win the general election. Democrats think the Iraq war is McCain's biggest liability, but he's going to make it the foundation of his campaign.
It's not a logical strategy, but that doesn't matter. If we are winning so well, why are we still there? If Petraeus and Odierno are geniuses at the level of Eisenhower and Patton, why is the Iraq war lasting longer and costing as much as World War II?
The illogic doesn't matter, because the story sounds good. Every American loves the story of American victory. Now America is in a recession and people are hungrier than ever for victory stories.
Petraeus and Odierno have chased the opposition out of its safe zones. But is chasing the enemy around the same thing as winning the war? No, the enemy just goes where there's less pressure and it comes right back when they pressure is off. So the strategy of "chase away the enemy" is a strategy that necessitates a permanent surge. An American policing force that is endlessly on the march. War with no end.
This is the issue that McCain hopes to win the White House with. He'll do it too, unless Democrats beat him on Iraq absolutely and totally. Do Clinton or Obama have the arguments to counter this strategy? I haven't seen it yet. |
