Teh Nutroots | Yep, more on McCain. Damozel already posted something on this.
The real moral is getting lost in all the quibbling over details. The REAL point is that McCain's military experience doesn't translate into superior understanding of foreign policy. The whole surge thing---McCain was right; Obama was wrong blah blah blah; and never mind that it's kind of previous to make that call---was supposed to prove that 'experienced' McCain was more likely to get these things right.
What---if he can't even keep the details straight? How's he going to make good judgments if he can't cope with details?
Republican John McCain pushed back on Wednesday against Democratic criticism that he misstated when the troop buildup ordered by President Bush began, saying elements were put in place before Bush announced the strategy in early 2007.
He told reporters during an unscheduled stop in a super market that, what the Bush administration calls "the surge" was actually "made up of a number of components," some of which began before the president's order for more troops.
It's all a matter of semantics, he suggested.
McCain said Army Col. Sean MacFarland started carrying out elements of a new counterinsurgency strategy as early as December 2006. (NYT)
To which the easy answer is: 'But Obama was talking about the other surge, the post-'surge' surge that everyone else calls 'The Surge.''
But of course maybe McCain will say that he has a private language in which "surge" means "counterinsurgency" and it's therefore wrong to bother him about this. In which case, I suppose it's hard for anyone to ever prove that he's wrong. But on the other hand if that's what he means, then it's hard to make sense of the claim that McCain was "right about the surge" whereas Obama was "wrong" since if "the surge" is just a generic term for the use of counterinsurgency tactics the I don't think McCain and Obama ever really disagreed.
Whoever was right or wrong about policy, McCain clearly can't keep the facts straight.
“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others,” Mr. McCain said. “And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.”...
[T]he sheik who helped form the Awakening, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was assassinated in September 2007, after the troop escalation began.
The National Security Network, a liberal foreign policy group, called Mr. McCain’s explanation of the surge’s history “completely wrong.”(NYT)
According to The New York Times, 'The National Security Network, a liberal foreign policy group, called Mr. McCain’s explanation of the surge’s history “completely wrong.”(NYT) Even so, according to The New York Times, the ever-popular Brookings Institute suggested that McCain was right about the broader point, which is that the Surge helped foster and protect the counter-insurgency. (NYT)
What-so-effin'-ever. You can argue this all the way back to the original decision to go into Iraq.
The question is the value of McCain's experience. We are constantly being told that he would be far more reliable in military matters and on foreign policy than Obama.
Of course, I don't know whether the Iraq War (never mind the Surge) was a success and neither does McCain or the Brookings Institute. At present, and since pretty recently, this appears to be the case. Let's talk about that in a year or two or three. Which factors contributed to it most could be argued till the end of time.
But what I do know is that McCain most definitely hasn't shown that his experience gives him a great big foreign policy edge over Obama.
Memeorandum here.
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