When it comes to John McCain’s assessment of conditions in Baghdad, the military knows he’s wrong, reporters in Iraq know he’s wrong, and now Iraqis themselves want to tell us that they know he’s wrong, too.
It was bad enough last week when McCain said parts of Baghdad are safe for Americans to go for a stroll and that General Petraeus travels around the city “almost every day in a non-armed Humvee.” But McCain really seems to have pushed his luck by going to a Baghdad market, surrounding himself with 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships, and then telling reporters that was able to walk freely in Iraq’s capital.
Locals are disgusted by the senator’s dishonesty.
A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.
“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal! … They paralyzed the market when they came. This was only for the media.” […]
Told about Mr. McCain’s assessment of the market, Abu Samer, a kitchenware and clothing wholesaler, scoffed: “He is just using this visit for publicity. He is just using it for himself. They’ll just take a photo of him at our market and they will just show it in the United States. He will win in America and we will have nothing.”
Indeed, as the congressional delegation moved through the well-protected market, merchants and customers reportedly tried to tell McCain and others about how unsafe Iraqis felt in that very area.
Given the coverage and the audacity of McCain’s foolishness, this is starting to look more and more like a jump-the-shark moment for the senator.
To be sure, McCain wasn’t the only conservative lawmaker making ridiculous comments. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who was a member of the same delegation, described the shopping area as being “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.” He’s right, if you overlook the fact that merchants’ lives are constantly in danger, and the only way for American customers to walk around is to bring an entire Army company for protection.
Of course, no serious person believes Mike Pence has a clue anyway, so his comments are easy to dismiss. McCain, however, pretends to have credibility. He’s a presidential candidate. His platform rests in part on his alleged expertise in military matters.
For him to have screwed up this badly, at this crucial time, may very well permanently undermine his campaign. It is a credibility-killing moment — he’s been caught making up nonsense that no one, anywhere, can believe, about the world’s most pressing crisis.
Indeed, the timing couldn’t be worse for the senator. His campaign is already perceived as faltering, his fundraising has been lackluster, and he’s slipping in the polls. The last thing McCain needed was a “Dukakis-in-a-tank moment,” but that’s what he has here.
[W]e all know the disconnect [between what we are told about what’s happening in Iraq and the overpowering reality of what we can see, read and hear about it]. But seldom has it been perfectly captured in image. And not just an image, because we’ve got plenty with the dingbat fibs and rah-rah nonsense. But you also want a bit of pathos and desperation, a measure of ridiculousness not just comic but somehow cosmic. And here I think we have it. […]
It’s an iconic moment, like but much more than the Dukakis image, since its ridiculousness can be come at again and again. […]
Politicians can be wrong and successful. But what no politician can handle or sustain is to be ridiculous. And isn’t that what we have here? And especially from someone who, at least some reasons ago, some of us had learned to expect so much more from.
When a once-proud man becomes a joke, it’s a sad thing to watch.
