Following the remarkable comments regarding America’s future in Iraq by Prime Minister Maliki, I found myself (along with many others) wondering how long it would be before somebody reminded Maliki that he had wandered a bit too far off leash (which didn’t take long) and how the McCain team would try to spin this body blow to their campaign. (Again, we weren’t kept waiting.) No matter how we slice, dice, spin or puree this, I have to agree with a few other observers that it isn’t just a big deal, it’s a very big deal. And the response from McCain thus far looks not just like closing the barn door following the horse’s escape, but after it has settled in at your competitor’s ranch, comfortably munching at the feed bag. It is also a situation which leaves us scrambling to check the scoreboard on the handling of the Iraq war in its three critical phases: The Past, The Mid-Game, and The Future.
The Past: The consistent position of McCain’s team seems to be that they still feel the initial invasion was the right thing to do, but even if mistakes were made and you disagree, that’s all in the past and we should focus on what to do going forward. Obama continues to point out that he opposed the war from the beginning and that factors into his proposal to get out. The winner? Well, if you’re PM Maliki, you agree with McCain that the war was “right and just.” (Perhaps not a remarkable position coming from a man who was hoisted to the seat of power after the war left Saddam, errrr… dangling.) But for American voters, a solid majority of whom still fill up poll results saying the war was a mistake, the winner seems to be Obama.
The Mid-Game: The Obama camp opposed the Surge initially (not that you can find it on his web site anymore) and wanted to leave long before now, while McCain maintains that he opposed the initial strategy, supported the Surge, and is responsible for the success we’ve seen recently. The winner? Maliki is full of praise for the Surge. Americans, albeit somewhat reluctantly, seem to have faced up to the sad, resigned admission of the media that the Surge produced significant military results and a decrease in casualties, and now seems to think (by a slight margin) that we might still make it out of Iraq with something better than abject failure. No matter which side of the ocean you’re on, McCain seems to win this round.
The Future: This is the one that seems to have suddenly shifted in dramatic fashion. The McCain team has based its entire criticism of Obama on “getting it wrong” on Iraq, while McCain “got it right.” They have repeatedly stated that the long term goal was a status of forces agreement where we would be military partners with a stable, democratic Iraq, creating a situation similar to that in Germany or Japan. They have continually beat that drum that a timeline for removing our forces would be “surrender” in that country. Maliki has now definitively stated that both of those positions are wrong and not in line with Iraq’s desires. They want us to leave as soon as is practical, and long term agreements should be diplomatic in nature, not military. They want their country back without any decades long strings attached.
The winner? I’m sorry, but there isn’t enough spin in all of NASA’s gyroscopes combined to make this look like a win for McCain. And with Sunday morning news shows now depicting Obama being greeting by soldiers giving him a standing ovation in Afghanistan, lunching with the troops and playing basketball with the marines, I wouldn’t want to be the one delivering coffee to the McCain war room today.