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(Update II) McCain Screws The Pooch On Iraq
After months of peddling a position on the Iraq war that has included an American troop presence anywhere from 100 years down to five years as he has had to repeatedly backpedal, John McCain now finds himself marginalized with Nouri Al-Maliki and Barack Obama, of all people, stealing his thunder on his war.
The presumptive Republican nominee already was on shaky ground by making the “success” of the Surge his major Iraq talking point and declaring the war “won” but offering only an ambiguous plan for ending American involvement.
The Surge has indeed been a success militarily, but the window of opportunity it provided for Prime Minister Al-Maliki and his fellow Shiites to work things out with the Sunnis has not produced major progress and now all-important provincial elections in the fall may be in peril. Besides which, that’s all so yesterday in the 24/7 world of news.
Today’s news is how isolated McCain seems to have become after Al-Maliki endorsed Obama’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops in 16 months or so as pretty much resembling his own in an interview with a German magazine.
This tempest might have passed relatively quickly, but the only effort at a retraction was issued not by the Iraqis but by the military press office of the American occupiers, while a translation of what Al-Maliki said clearly showed who his horse is in the presidential race.
If that was not bad enough for McCain, Al-Maliki made no bones about where his sentiments lie as the man with the plan got the red-carpet treatment when he stopped by the PM’s office in the Green Zone yesterday en route to what is shaping up to be a hugely enthusiastic reception in Europe.
McCain settled for a trip to the Poppy Zone, the Maine home of former President George H.W. Bush, where he glowered for the cameras and chewed on his ever handy supply of sour grapes.
But while McCain is screwing the pooch on Iraq, he is fortunate that few Americans will notice. Obama still has an uphill fight to convince voters that he has foreign policy and national security cred, and events on the ground in Iraq could unravel quickly, which would play to McCain. And although some commentators are calling Al-Maliki’s endorsement the biggest development of the campaign, let’s not forget that he is a scumbag of the first water, and is using Obama to his own advantage. And vise versa, of course.
In any event, a funny thing is happening on the way to November: Obama seems more like the realist when it comes to the war than does McCain, who must be struggling hard to suppress his imperialistic instincts.
The hateful John Derbyshire, who reliably unloads buckets of bile over those ungrateful Iraqis, might well have been reading McCain’s mind when he penned this screed over at The Corner:
“Now that our American blood and money has seen off most of the enemies of Maliki and his Iranian pals, it is perfectly natural for them to believe they can finish the job themselves, without further assistance from us. Maliki can now afford to start putting distance between himself and the U.S.A. — essential for political viability in a region where the U.S.A. is pretty generally hated.
“We should tell Maliki, loudly and in public, that he owes his job to us, and that further prosecution of our military operations in his country will be conducted with regard only to U.S. interests, as determined in consensus by our established domestic political processes. And if he doesn’t like that, he can go to hell.”
Meanwhile, in a delicious sideshow to all of this, The New York Times has rejected a McCain response to Obama’s recent op-ed piece laying out his Iraq withdrawal plan because it merely was a critique of Obama’s views. Times opinion page editor David Shipley told the McCain campaign that he would be pleased to look at another draft.
A campaign spokesman, conveniently and convincingly missing the point, harrumphed that McCain wasn’t going to change his position on Iraq because of The Times‘ “demands.”
Ahem.
22 Responses to “(Update II) McCain Screws The Pooch On Iraq”
Since McCain has zero chance of winning, who cares what is positions are or what he is saying.
If Shaun was honest, he would make a long post looking at the overall foreign policy position of the next president, Senator McCain. My guess is that Shaun will say that he positions are perfect and nothing could possibly go wrong.
New York Times to Senator McCain:
Surges? We don't need no stinkin' surges.
It's just a copycat form of Bush-bashing. Shaun may really believe the Big Lie that McCain is another Dubya. (And no, McCain's visit to Dubya's “courageous” no-tax pledge-breaking father does not change that. It doesn't even necessarily cause us to suspect the GOP remains dysfunctional and that we'd see retreads once again in a McCain administration. McCain is just dredging a dysfunctional GOP for whatever support he can get. “Please, Mr. President 41. Please say I remind you of President Reagan at a press conference.”)
Of course SEnator Obama has an entire set of foreign policy proposals that Shaun will never discuss. See http://www.barackobama.com/issues/foreignpolicy/
I wonder how shaun reconciles the call for the U.S. to abandon Iraq in 2006 with Senator Obama's plan to involve in the U.S. in Darfur but not involve the U.S. in Zimbabwe?
Eventually foreign policy has to go beyond telling people what they want to hear. Senator Obama has not reached that point yet and progressive blogers definitely are not going to talk about it.
I guess the daily bashing of Senator McCain when he has zero chance of being president makes up for the obtuseness of refusing to look at the policy proposals on Senator Obama. When I looked at them, the appeared to have been written by the screen writers of the West Wing.
“New York Times to Senator McCain: “
Of course we're going to play games with you. We're the Dems' flagship! This Democratic campaigning we're doing is for real. Screw you, McCain and other Republicans. We hate you.
* * *
Time to put it away instantly. Superdestroyer, Shaun with his Bush-bashing and weak copycat McCain-bashing should be put in charge of McCain's dysfunctional campaign. McCain has blamed Obama for the recent rise in motor vehicle fuel prices. That's standard operating procedure with Shaun. Obama should be blamed for Bhutto's assassination, too, along with anything that goes wrong either in Iraq or Afghanistan, if Shaun were to be hired to do what he does routinely here, for McCain's campaign. It's the same thing Shaun does with Bush every day.
BAM! … phlopp
“McCain has zero chance of winning”
I was listening last night to lefty talk radio. In the afternoon-evening that station presents what sounds like the audio presentation of a television political news program. Everyone on that show last night, liberal and (what seemed to be) conservative commentators, were agreed that McCain's campaign currently is disastrous. Blaming Obama for high fuel prices? (the kind of ridiculous thing Shaun does all the time with Bush and now sometimes with McCain) Everyone was laughing at how pathetic that was. McCain really is plodding and muddling along and is going to effectively rely on what anti-Obama votes may come his way from swing voters in addition to those of very suspicious, wary, unsupportive truly conservative voters. McCain has to select a conservative as his VP or he may as well concede, forfeit, resign at any time. He's probably going to choose some GOP establishment guy instead; he may have been going over a list of candidates with the elder Bush.
DLS,
What the Republicans should do in Minneapolis is decide that Senator McCain is a massive disaster and open the convention up to nominating someone who actually is a Republican. Of course, the next day Shaun would have a post linking the new candidate to the Bush Administration and repeating his mantra of Cheney, corruption, and low poll numbers.
And he'd betray his overt bias once more by posting another photo of Obama when bashing McCain.
Looks like McCain isn't the only one chewing on sour grapes.
J. Spencer, don't be illogical. Noting Shaun's time-worn standard operating procedure, and being critical of it, is not sour grapes. Obama has done all the right things on his trip and it's not sour grapes to also note that he's the media darling abroad as well as at home, where political manipulation and quasi-sensorship to make McCain look bad is welcomed by Shaun as “delicious.”
Once again, Shaun, what Republicans has to say or what McCain does or does not do is pointless since the Reublicans will totally out of power in a few months.
Please take the time to nitpick Senator Obama's foreign policy proposals so that everyone can see that you are capable of criticizing a Democrat. Somehow I doubt that you will post one negative sentence about Senator Obama between now and November.
Ah…
Animal behavior..
****
“Everyone on that show last night, liberal and (what seemed to be) conservative commentators, were agreed that McCain's campaign currently is disastrous. Blaming Obama for high fuel prices? (the kind of ridiculous thing Shaun does all the time with Bush and now sometimes with McCain) Everyone was laughing at how pathetic that was. McCain really is plodding and muddling along”
************
Oh silly people…when will you learn that the GOP doesn't “muddle” without a good reason..?
Look for the “muddling” to clear up just after Hillary isn't nominated. If you have any doubts about the GOP's ability to be ruthless and sly, just check your history books or recent news..
There is something so disconcerting about watching critters pecking at grain bits and walking straight towards a deadfall trap. You just want to reach out and shoo them away no matter how many times they peck your fingers away in defense of their “sure thing”…
When a predator stalks it's prey it often will adapt very odd behavior to fool one of the weakest of the herd into a one-on-one. Doesn't anyone watch The Discovery Channel anymore?
The GOP is affecting a limp. Don't be fooled. They have the Larry Sinclair story “in play” and perched ready to drop the minute Hillary does from the race officially..and permanently..
They want Obama to look the stronger candidate now…it keeps the real competition from having a chance…they know if everyone finds out about the Sinclair story, there will be a cry for Clinton to step in…and that's something the GOP cannot so easily bat away with a scandal story, they've already vetted her that way.. Not so with Obama…oh dear me no.. They haven't even begun..
The Obama Trap..
Wow. John Derbyshire was born a few centuries too late.
Sil,
Still seeing those monsters under your bed and in your closet? Do you need a night light?
lol no. But I have seen the Larry Sinclair story.
You might want a night light after you see it.
Are you saying the Larry Sinclair story doesn't exist? Or maybe just that it isn't “in play”?
lol….pretending something doesn't exist isn't going to help you. And neither is ridiculing it's messenger.
Sil,
Larry Sinclair is a joke. The media isn't ignoring him. They've looked at his story and decided he's full of sh*t.
What, no updated choice of photograph, Shaun? This is supposed to be about McCain but I don't see him in the Baghdad marketplace in armor with an air escort overhead accompanying all those bodyguards.
DLS,
I think the photo works well with Shaun's first paragraph. Stolen thunder indeed.
Obama was always going to be favored, Chris — there, in Europe, everywhere.
McCain is not “imperialistic,” much less “petro-colonialistic-imperialistic and war-destruction-and-death-obscessed.”
DLS,
If McCain's not those things, he has a funny way of showing it.
ChrisWWW,
You may need to show a little sympathy to Sil, it must be extremely difficult for one to grasp at any tiny crumbling or non-existent straws one can find while keeping one's tinfoil hat from falling off.
(/snark)
[...] JaJae wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAfter months of peddling a position on the Iraq war that has included an American troop presence anywhere from 100 years down to five years as he has had to repeatedly backpedal, John McCain now finds himself marginalized with Nouri … Read the rest of this great post here [...]