Democrats seem to have found the one criticism that gets John McCain angrier than anything else — bring up his comments about keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for “100 years.” Every time a high profile Dem (Clinton, Obama, Dean, et al) mentions this, he becomes enraged and insists his comments have been mischaracterized.
It’s true that McCain did not, as a point of fact, indicate that he wants to see the ongoing war continue until 2108, but rather, he envisions thousands of American troops “maintaining a presence” in the country for 100 years, after some semblance of stability has been established. They’re not, to be fair, the same thing.
As far as the McCain campaign is concerned, this realization should effectively end the controversy. Joe Klein argues that McCain’s confused about this, too.
The problem with John McCain’s 100 years in Iraq formulation isn’t that he’s calling for 95 more years of combat — he isn’t — but that he thinks you can have a long-term basing arrangement in Iraq similar to those we have in Germany or Korea. That betrays a fairly acute lack of knowledge about both Iraq and Islam. It may well be possible to station U.S. troops in small, peripheral kingdoms like Dubai or Kuwait, but Iraq is — and has always been — volatile, tenuous, centrally-located and nearly as sensitive to the presence of infidels as Saudi Arabia. It is a terrible candidate for a long-term basing agreement.
Quite right. I’d just add, however, that McCain already knows this. In fact, he’s admitted as much.
The point seems to have been largely forgotten, but back in November, after months of insisting that Korea could be a model for a long-term troop presence in Iraq, McCain abandoned this position, saying he doesn’t want to use Korea as a model, and adding that the “nature of the society in Iraq” and the “religious aspects” of the country make withdrawal inevitable.
Soon after, McCain went back to his original position again, saying that a Korean model is entirely appropriate. So, for those keeping score at home, McCain 1) endorsed a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 2) denounced a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 3) re-embraced his first point; and 4) blasted those who agreed with his second argument as being incompetent.
At the risk of sounding impolite, this guy is starting to make Bush look like he’s engaged and knowledgeable.
Klein added:
…McCain’s frequent “You don’t know anything” tirades about national security might be more effective if he had a better sense of the war in question. When I asked him about Basra in January, he assured me that it was “not a problem.” Last week, he seemed to think it was a good idea for the militia that calls itself the Iraqi Army to attack the militia that calls itself the Mahdi Army. So did George W. Bush, who posited it as the good guys fighting the “terrorists.” This betrayed a fundamental lack of knowledge about Shi’ite politics, something any good President or presidential contender — especially one who styles himself a “national security” expert — needs to study. McCain surely knows more about the military than Barack Obama does — and Obama certainly needs to learn more — but McCain’s carelessness and oversimplification, and wrong analysis, when it comes to the situation in Iraq puts him in a surprisingly vulnerable position.
I think this is largely right. On the point about McCain knowing more about the military than Obama, this may be at least partially true. Asked for the differences between a brigade and a battalion, for example, Obama would probably have to stop and think about it, while McCain probably wouldn’t.
But if we get beyond military definitions and start thinking about the basics of international events, Obama out-classes McCain every day of the week. Just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen McCain express bizarre and surprising confusion about everything from Basra, to al Qaeda, to Iran, to Moqtada al-Sadr, to reconciliation. We’re not talking about minor verbal gaffes; McCain simply got all of the relevant facts wrong about Iraq basics — the kind of things one would know from reading a daily newspaper.
What’s more, it’s getting worse for McCain, not better. I suspected that once McCain secured the Republican nomination, he’d have time to play catch-up, and start getting detailed briefings on current events. The mistakes he was making in January would be corrected by March.
Except, they haven’t been. McCain actually seems more confused now than ever. If he weren’t running on a platform based on military and national security expertise, this would merely be humiliating. But that he doesn’t seem to understand his principal campaign issues doesn’t speak well to his strengths as a candidate.
The sooner the Democratic contest ends, the more attention will be paid to McCain’s bewilderment.
