Fisking McCain
Andrew Sullivan nails it. I agree that there is much to applaud with McCain, and I continue to respect McCain a lot. But Sully is right to call him on his willingness to toe the line in a have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too sort of way. This war has been a failure of incompetence, but it isn’t a failure, and we ought to keep betting lives on a 180 on competence. We should poo-poo the critics of the war, even though they’ve been abundantly right. We should continue to extend an unlimited credit line to the current executors of policy even though they have proven themselves absolutely undeserving of it. And, most importantly, when it’s time for accountability, when we have opportunities to change the course, to make an impact and meaningfully take to task the failures of policy and execution, we should instead shut up and campaign.
The tall and short of it is McCain simply has no credibility left on the War in Iraq. He is running on the Bush legacy–he has made that more than clear. Money shot from Sully:
Look: if this war has actually increased the power of al Qaeda, has helped recruit many more Jihadists to the cause, and has been conducted with the level of incompetence McCain claims, then he really has no credibility in his strategy right now if he doesn’t explicitly and clearly run a campaign that offers clear blue sky between his strategy and the Bush legacy. His speech yesterday didn’t and couldn’t do that if it were to appeal to Republican primary voters. It even contained direct, partisan swipes at Democrats for their current posture. McCain cannot have it both ways. By his own admission, the Democrats have been proved right about this president. The failures in this war are squarely Republican failures. And yet he still plays the partisan card – against those who have been right. Oy.
Myself, I broadly agree with McCain. The surge may be too little and too late, but he is right that he has an obligation to continue to try and spread the word because of previosly calling for more troops (a call with which I wholeheartedly agreed). As for the incompetence issue (on which he has been eloquent), to paraphrase Rumsfeld, you have to continue the war with the administration you have, not the one that you want. It’s not as if we can wait until January 2009 before increasing the troops and changing strategy.
In criticising Democrats, he’s right, they are opposed to him (not just the Democrats, of course; Chuck Hagel and others, within the GOP, are also down on McCain’s opinions).
Comment by Adam — 4/12/2007 @ 10:48 am
I’m with Adam on this.
McCain’s advocacy from the very beginning has been that Iraq ought to be occupied by as many troops as is politically possible. He has consistently criticized the administration for doing less than is necessary; to the extent that he has endorsed their proposals, it has been as an alternative to proposals that we occupy with even fewer troops.
I don’t see much in McCain’s speech at VMI that I’d consider arguable. Withdrawl from Iraq at this stage would indeed do significantly more harm than good.
What we have here is a politician making a principled stand despite the fact that it’s politically damaging to him. I appreciate that, and I’d like to think I’d appreciate it even if I disagreed with the stand itself.
Comment by Rojas — 4/12/2007 @ 5:21 pm
By McCain’s own reckoning, the people primarily responsible for the heretofore abysmal failures of the most important foreign policy initiative of our times are the people he vigorously supports, enables, and is taking up the mantle of. I’m not sure how he squares that, myself, save the obvious naked politicking, which frankly doesn’t make me feel good about him, and I’m not sure why it should (never mind why I would take that as a sign of principle).
Comment by Brad — 4/13/2007 @ 9:58 am