McCain's irrational position on "solving Iraq" is exposed

[BurtWorm]

By Glen Greenwald:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/10/john-mccain-unveils-his-grand-plan-for.html

....

So, to recap McCain's position: (1) in order to win in Iraq, we need to expand our military by 100,000 more troops; (2) we don't have anywhere near 100,000 troops to send to Iraq, and nobody suggests that we do; (3) a draft is absolutely unnecessary.

I don't think McCain even knows what to say about Iraq at this point -- the Straight Talker refuses admit that it was wrong because he was one of the loudest cheerleaders for it, but there are also plainly no viable options to change what is occurring -- so all he does is babble incoherently about it. As best I can tell, his position is that we need 100,000 more troops to win, and that young Americans one day are going to realize this and there will be a spontaneous and massive wave of volunteers eager to go to Iraq and fight in combat there because they will realize -- like McCain and the President do -- just how Very Important it is that we win.

So we'll just wait until that happens. But the first test of McCain's Grand Plan wasn't very auspicious. Matthews and McCain were appearing before an audience of college students at Iowa State University, and after McCain unveiled his grand serious Plan for Victory -- relying on spontaneous bursts of volunteers for combat in Iraq -- Matthews asked those in the audience who supported the war in Iraq to stand up. Large numbers of them bravely stood in support of the War. Matthews then asked those who plan to join the military to fight in Iraq to stand up. A tiny fraction of them did. Matthews then observed:


MATTHEWS: All you people standing up are planning to participate in the war in some way? Really? Everybody here.

MCCAIN: Thank you very much, my friends.

MATTHEWS: Because I asked a minute ago how many were going to join the military. I wonder what your participation would involve.

MCCAIN: Chris, your bias is starting to show. . . .

MATTHEWS: I want the people that are standing up. Somebody yell out why are you standing if you‘re not joining the military. OK, you were one of those. Keep going, anybody else? Of course, look at all the people in the back. I asked before if anybody was joining the military. And now you‘re standing up in support of the war but not in terms of a plan to actually participate in a war. I don‘t get the connection. Would somebody explain it?


McCain complained that Matthews' line of questioning meant that his "bias is starting to show." Apparently, if one demonstrates that McCain's Plan for Victory is based on absurd fantasy, that is "biased." A reporter should only sit by and heap praise on McCain as the responsible, serious Leader that he is.

So, John McCain's bold, straight-talking Plan for Victory in Iraq is to wait for Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, Peter Beinert and Glenn Reynolds to realize how Western Civilization Hangs in the Balance in Iraq and that only more troops can save us. And once they realize that, they are going to stand up bravely and risk their lives in combat in Iraq -- waves and waves and waves of them -- and that will fortify our military presence there and we will win. Waiting for a big thunderbolt from the sky to strike down the Insurgents seems like a more probable and rational plan.

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[Beelzebud]

1. Glen Greenwald is my favorite blogger.

He's simply great.

[BurtWorm]

2. More

Advocating this war because one believed -- mistakenly -- that it would produce certain positive results imposes a certain level of culpability for what has happened. But continuing to advocate this war while knowing -- as McCain and so many like him do -- that (a) it is achieving nothing positive and (b) there are no viable and realistic options for achieving anything positive, places one in a different moral universe entirely.

John McCain's insistence that we're going to win in Iraq because the additional troops that we need to win are going to magically and spontaneously appear in a sudden outpouring of patriotic courage is a disgusting joke, but, as Americans have largely realized, that is what the Iraq war has become. Only the national media and the hardest-core Bush followers continue to cling to the fantasy that the people who brought us this disaster and continue to justify it with incoherence and fiction of this sort are the serious, responsible foreign policy leaders. Their foreign policy views are adolescent and completely incoherent - the very opposite of responsible and serious.