John McCain says the United States could stay "100 years... 1,000... 1 million years" in Iraq. But what does he mean?
The liberal group MoveOn.org began airing ads Wednesday against Republican John McCain, citing his claim that the U.S.
Haven't we been listening to talk of "100 years" of war in Iraq for 100 years now? It certainly feels that way. But this favorite talking point of the two Democrats presidential candidates is bogus.
"Instead of offering an exit strategy for Iraq, (Sen. John McCain is) offering us a 100-year occupation," Sen. Barack Obama said on the fifth anniversary of the coalition’s move on the then-oppressed Iraq. But it could have been any day; Obama uses the sound bite often enough.
What the "100 years" talk refers to is something McCain rightly said in response to a question during a New Hampshire townhall meeting in January. The question regarded Bush’s statement that we could be in Iraq for 50 more years. McCain sensibly responded: "Make it 100. We’ve . . . been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day."
When asked to clarify, he would go on to say that it could be 1,000 years, or even a million years. These are the lines that try Democrats’ souls. But McCain was right about the long war. It was a sensible answer. And though it doesn’t sound like the most attractive answer -- who wants 100 years in Iraq? -- it was straight talk from a senator who has a better track record on Iraq than most. And it may not hurt his campaign, either.
John McCain has been insisting that his 100 years in Iraq comment is being taken out of context. That in fact what he meant is that American troops can stay in Iraq for fifty or 100 years if American troops are no longer being attacked. This assertion leads to a whole new set of questions that reflect McCain's lack of understanding of what is going on inside Iraq.
First of all, how exactly does Senator McCain envision getting to a point where there are no American casualties in Iraq? The idea of a large American troop presence in Iraq that does not draw any fire is farfetched. What we have in Iraq today is some odd and complicated mix of numerous sectarian conflicts with Americans stuck in the middle. This isn’t Korea. There will be no armistice or Demilitarized Zone. Senator McCain has not laid out any kind of a roadmap or strategy for how we get to this idealized scenario where American forces are no longer being fired upon.
Second, how long does he think it will take to get to this end state that he envisions? Will it take 10 years? Will it take 20? 30? When under his plan do American troops stop taking casualties? It would be good to know.
Finally, there is the question of a permanent presence in Iraq and the strategic costs to the United States. One of the Bush Administration’s premises for the war in Iraq, was the idea that we needed to eliminate Al Qaeda. But one of the major inspirations for Al Qaeda, was the American presence in Saudi Arabia. In a similar way, creating a large permanent troop presence in Iraq would act as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and draw anger and suspicion from all over the Arab World.
John McCain meets voters in Selma, Ala. Can he win the support of black voters?
Seeking support in rural Alabama, Republican presidential candidate John McCain this week said he knows it will be difficult to win over black voters who have supported Democrats for generations. "I am aware the African-American vote has been very small in favor of the Republican Party," McCain told reporters.
The Republican strategy for making inroads into the black vote has failed consistently for more than a quarter of a century. Yet it never seems to occur to them to change their approach.
The first thing that they do that is foredoomed to failure is trying to reach blacks through the civil-rights organizations and other institutions of the black establishment. The second proven loser is trying to appeal to blacks by offering the same kinds of things that Democrats offer — token honors, politically correct rhetoric, and welfare-state benefits.
Blacks who want those things know that they can already get them from the Democrats. Why should they listen to Republicans who act like imitation Democrats?
The Republican establishment is taking all this in with mixed emotions—part confusion, part exasperation. Talk to them about the black vote and you'll get history books stuffed with anecdotes about how Republicans pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, how Democrats take blacks for granted, how George W. Bush has given an administration job to every black official with a resume, how black home-ownership numbers are way up under the GOP.
If they really want to court the African-American vote, Republicans must first acknowledge—if only to themselves—that they spent the '70s and '80s alienating, and in some cases demonizing, black voters; that their policies (school choice, Social Security privatization) haven't sold with blacks as well as the GOP hoped they would; and that the last decade of outreach has been wasted. Of course, this isn't the quick-fix Republicans want. It's more like a surgeon's advice to the victim of a botched facelift: multiple expensive operations over many, many years. Let the healing begin.
Future opponents for the White House?
When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress this week to report on progress in Iraq, there will be one question he'll try to avoid -- is he a candidate for president in 2012?
If Iraqis could elect America's next president, chances are good that the next occupant of the Oval Office would be Gen. David Petraeus.
Barring that unlikely development, John McCain will do. Or so I hear from an Iraqi journalist with whom I've corresponded the past couple of years, a woman whose family was once courted by Saddam Hussein but who later became a victim of his torturers.
Mayada al-Askari is today a reporter for the Gulf News, based in Dubai but with deep Iraqi roots. Her missives, which she has agreed to let me excerpt here, haven't always been easy to read and often betrayed resentment mixed with gratitude.
For the past year, the GOP has laid the groundwork to enlist Petraeus as its standard-bearer in the fairly likely event that the party loses in November to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. You read it here first. Plant your lawn signs now. Petraeus 2012: Surging to the White House.
In the event of a Republican loss in November, the party will have to come to terms with the legacy of the war. The most politically advantageous way of doing that will be to draft a symbol of the Iraq war as it might have been: engineered and executed not by the hidebound ideologues and incompetents of the Bush administration, but by a nimble, dexterous warrior-scholar. It's true that John McCain has made the surgenik critique of the war for a long time. But it's a whole new political world when articulated by the man responsible -- in the media's imagination, at least -- with the war's belated redemption.
Shore up the base? Or tack to the middle?
The Democrats are still duking it out, but Republicans seem to have settled on a front-runner: John McCain. Now he has an advantage: More time to build the case against the Democrats while they make their cases against each other. But he also has a problem: Persuading skeptical conservatives to support his candidacy.
They say that McCain’s victories prove that opposition to amnesty is a losing issue. Actually, the anti-amnesty candidates — including Mike Huckabee, who has been running as a deportationist — have gotten majorities in most states. Even in Florida, where strong Hispanic support gave McCain a decisive win, the anti-amnesty candidates got nearly half the vote. McCain’s success proves that Republican politicians can survive supporting amnesty if they have compensating strengths. It does not prove that the issue helped him. As Ramesh Ponnuru writes in the upcoming issue of National Review, conservatives cannot reasonably ask McCain to abandon his convictions on immigration. But they can ask him to say that he will defer any action on amnesty, or guest workers, until a few years after enforcement has been put into effect.
One could, alternatively, imagine that the absence of a clear Democratic opponent would make it much harder for McCain to start attacking (back in 2004, the GOP was able to coalesce around the Kerry flip-flopping meme early on, which gave it time to sink in). Meanwhile, it seems that as long as the Democratic nomination is up in the air, dissatisfied conservatives are more likely to spend time airing their grievances with McCain than training their fire on his opponent.
Some of these people are still waiting in line to vote.
It's Super Tuesday night, and it looks to be a long one. The exit polls are showing some unexpected numbers for Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. The delegate fight is still a pitched battle for John McCain and Hillary Clinton.
(Our own Joel Mathis is liveblogging from the Kansas caucus.)
But don't forget, there are some major primaries and caucuses ahead. And even as the returns start rolling in across the country Tuesday, the Republican and Democratic campaigns are looking ahead to contests in Washington, Nebraska, Virginia, Ohio and Texas. The strategizing has only just begun.
Share your thoughts about how the race is shaping up in your state, how you voted, what surprised you and what you think will happen next.
Fred Barnes marveled on Fox News about Huckabee possibly taking “five states! five states!” Barnes called it a “remarkable comeback.” Before anyone gets carried away with talk of a Huck resurgence, though, most of his victories are taking place in states that aren’t winner-take-all. Whatever delegates he picks up in Georgia, Alabama, etc., will be more than offset by his zero showings in NY and NJ and his weak showings in California, Illinois.
While Obama has clearly caught up to, and perhaps passed, Clinton in the battle for the nomination, they continue to have complementary strengths and weaknesses. To win in November, Obama is going to have do much much better among the white working class--one can assume that he would get Clinton's female voters just as she would get his African American voters. Clinton, on other hand, looks very shaky among white men. There remains a question, too, whether the young voters and independents who have flocked to Obama's banner would vote for her in the fall.
Links to Rocky Mountain News RSS feed
