McCain wants another ‘seven or eight months’ in Iraq

October 23, 2007

War supporters have historically talked about staying the course in six-month increments. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently, wants to expand the timeline a bit. (via ThinkProgress)

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., predicted the next eight months will reveal whether the battle against insurgents in Iraq will be won, and, if not, the American people will demand we withdraw American troops short of that victory.

“Within some months from now, I would say in seven or eight months, if we continue to see the progress we’ve seen in the last eight months, I think Americans will be generally accepting that we are withdrawing and ceding more authority over to the Iraqi military and that we are achieving quote ‘success,’ ” McCain explained during an interview Monday with The Telegraph editorial board.

Earlier this year, when Bush’s so-called “surge” was just getting under way, war supporters routinely talked about the future in small increments. The administration just needed a “few months,” or “six months,” or until “late spring,” or until “summer,” or until Gen. Petraeus reported in September.

But even Bush backers soon realized these arbitrary intervals were not only silly, they were, more importantly, easy to disprove. The time would elapse, Atrios would do a post, and everyone would see how wrong they were. Lately, even congressional Republicans have shied away from the incessant use of “Friedmans.”

That is, except John McCain, who apparently doesn’t much care about being taken seriously.

ThinkProgress notes that McCain has asked for just a little more time, over and over again, for years.

Mar. 2007: “This is our last shot, my friends.”

Feb. 2007: “We can know fairly well in a few months [if the escalation strategy is succeeding].”

Nov. 2006: “We’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months.”

Dec. 2005: “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”

And yet, here we are, with McCain saying if we can just stay the course until next summer, then we’ll be pleased with the results and then we can start bringing some of the troops home.

No, I don’t know how McCain says this with a straight face, either.

The senator added, “If things go south again and we have significant setbacks, then I think the American people are probably going to demand that we get out, no matter how I feel and no matter how I am convinced about what the consequences of failure are.”

Um, senator? The people have been demanding that we get out for quite a while now, and you’ve been the one ignoring them.

So much for Senator Ramp Strike:

From yesterday’s Salon War Room (italics mine):

We woke up last Monday morning to find the Washington Post reporting that the U.S. military believes it has “dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaida in Iraq in recent months.” We didn’t get too excited about the news; we’ve heard premature proclamations of victory before, and something told us that another shoe was still to drop.

Thump.

We woke up this Monday morning to find the Washington Post reporting that the U.S. military believes that “Shiite extremists pose a rising threat to the U.S. effort in Iraq.” The reason: By suppressing Sunni groups like al-Qaida in Iraq, U.S. forces have shifted the balance of power in favor of the Shiites.

The result of the realization: Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker have revised their plans for Iraq to focus more on combating the Shiite militias even as (1) they acknowledge that the U.S. military will never defeat all of its enemies in Iraq, and (2) they shift focus from the benchmarks they previously stressed to more “concrete, practical” — read, “modest” — steps they’d like to see Iraq’s political leaders take.

Oh, and the troop drawdown that we’re supposed to be seeing between now and July? The Post’s report offers yet another reminder that it’s not exactly a done deal. “Redeployments of U.S. brigades — even of the surge forces — are dependent on the security situation on the ground in Iraq,” Petraeus advisor Col. John Martin tells the Post. “If Gen. Petraeus early next year sees the security situation deteriorating, he will have the courage to go back to the president and say he needs to keep forces that he had planned to send home.”

  • Just like the Alcoholic-In-Chief, “a thousand’s not enough and one’s too many.”

    The problem is that there can be no objective measure of success in the interest of American National Defense in the continued imposition of a police state by a foreign occupier on the once-sovereign nation state of Iraq. The only success attainable is imperialism –which is being effected (regardless of the number of Friedmans alotted).

    From the perspective of America, the “cause of freedom” is not in Iraq, it is in America. But I encourage those who believe that the “cause of freedom” is in Iraq to kindly relocate there.

  • If Kucinich is elected president he has vowed to have Bush and Cheney arrested his first day in office. He should include Pelosi and others who refuse to do their duty or hold to their oath of office to defend the constitution. We will get rid of Bush/Cheney and the republicans eventually…it’s now a matter of pre-Iran war or post-Iran war. Pre Iranian mass murder or post Iranian mass murder. Pre-mass terrorism or post mass terrorism.
    But they will go…eventually…though they should have been gone already.

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