Iraq, Part One

John McCain and Barack Obama have two very distinct and different world views. The evidence played out in front of a national television audience last Friday night. John McCain, as I previously stated, still acts as if we are in the midst of the Cold War, while Barack Obama follows the moniker of John F. Kennedy, who said "We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate."

John McCain is still convinced that the world is made up of friends and enemies and that victory is the ultimate deterrent to more violence. In essence, proving your military might against an adversary will strike fear into those who would like to harm America and safety and status quo will be maintained. I cannot blame McCain for this stance. He is 72 years old and he has seen and lived through many conflicts that played out this way. While I cannot blame him for this view, he is certainly responsible for the fallacy of this view.

McCain is an advocate of the Powell Doctrine, named for General Colin Powell, which states:

Do not commit U.S. troops unless the mission and exit strategy are clear and overwhelming force is applied. Then give the military, and your allies, full and unstinting support.

That is a solid and respectable declaration. Unfortunately, McCain does not follow it fully. He is too impetuous, too much of a maverick, if you will. This is evident in his "campaign suspension" last week to jump into the fray of the bailout and in his reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. The day after the attacks, McCain and Joe Lieberman went on the CBS' The Early Show where Lieberman identified Iran, Iraq, and Syria as co-conspirators because they provided a safe haven for terrorists. McCain agreed and said "These [terrorist] networks are well embedded in some of these countries." How could he knew all of this less than 24 hours after the attacks with no intelligence confirmation?

Although an alleged proponent of the Powell Doctrine, McCain said on Larry King Live on December 19, 2002 that "Our technology, particularly air-to-ground technology, is vastly improved. I don't think you're going to have to see the scale or number of troops that we saw, nor the length of the buildup, obviously, that we had back in 1991." This is in direct opposition to Colin Powell's message to President Bush. Powell said "I tried to avoid this war. I took him (Bush) through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers." Powell, apparently, tried to persuade Bush for over two hours to avoid this conflict in Iraq. After he was unsuccessful, he encouraged Bush to add more military to the initial invasion, only to be rebuked. On the other hand, McCain told the Hartford Courant on March 5, 2003 "I have no qualms about our strategic plans."

McCain was among the most aggressive proponents of a preemptive strike against Saddam Hussein, co-sponsoring the resolution of force against Iraq. While debating the resolution on March 19, 2003, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia took to the Senate floor and said "We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. After the war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe." McCain also took the Senate floor that day to proclaim "When the people of Iraq are liberated, we will have again written another chapter in the glorious history of the United States of America."

President Bush and his administration (half-heartedly) were determined to accomplish whatever it was they set out to do in Iraq (I believe it was to liberate the Iraqis and find and destroy weapons of mass destruction under the guise that Iraq harbored and abetted terrorist organizations, thus being eligible for invasion under the Bush Doctrine), so the president rebuked all "think groups" and the American public, all of whom told him to get out of Iraq. Shortly thereafter, the idea for the surge came from some low-level underlings and Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. It was the fall of 2006, so Bush sat on the idea because he didn't want to publicly endorse more troops for Iraq until after the election season. McCain coupled himself with the surge idea because he had been rallying for more troops since 2003. Finally, the military, almost four years after the start of the war, was going to get its overwhelming force. Unfortunately, there was (is) still no clear objective or exit strategy in place.

In April 2007, McCain told Condoleezza Rice "We may be about to lose the second war in my lifetime." This was unacceptable to McCain. He was more interested in victory than anything else. The legacy of the United States of America and its war record held more interest than the will of the American people and the lives of our servicemen and -women. Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political science professor, says that "McCain owns Iraq as much as Bush does now" in reference to the surge.

McCain claims that the surge is working, but it has been well-documented that the Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $10 a day (in between $700,000 and $800,000 per day) not to attack U.S. forces. Those payments began as soon as the additional troops began landing in Iraq. Military officials cannot seem to agree whether the additional troops played or the payoffs played the biggest role in reducing the violence, and we can never know since these two events occur ed simultaneously.

McCain says on his website, "The best way to secure long-term peace and security is to establish a stable, democratic state in Iraq that poses no threat to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists. When Iraqi forces can safeguard their own country, American troops can return home."

On May 15, 2008, McCain said this about the future during a speech in Columbus, Ohio: "By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and -women who have sacrificed so terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom."

On May 2, 2008 in Colorado, McCain said "My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will-that will prevent us-that will prevent us from ever having to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East." Later in the day he sought to clarify those remarks to an Associated Press reporter. He said "The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction."

It just doesn't matter why we went to war in Iraq (even though John McCain seems as sketchy on this as he is on the economy), it only matters that we get out of there. We cannot stabilize a society that has been at odds with itself for years unless we fill the role of Saddam Hussein as dictator. We've installed a form of democracy, many U.S. companies have gotten wealthy off the non-competitive contracts they have received from our government to rebuild what our military destroyed, and we have trained their armed forces. When are we going to leave like their government wants and our citizens demand?

Apparently the Bush administration is concerned that there will either be a civil war or that Iraq will be attacked by another Middle Eastern country if we pull our troops out. If it's a civil war, Colin Powell says "It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States." If another country attacks, we will be at fault because we left the door open when we kicked it down (military reports confirm that there were no terrorist organizations in Iraq until we attacked).

Victory, President Bush and Senator McCain, is too elusive, unless we let the Iraqi government start standing on its own. I don't know if the pipe dream will come true even then, but it's better than adding to the lists of those killed (4175), those wounded (30,662), and those effected (over 150,000 servicemen and -women have filed for disability and too many families who have lost loved ones) by this atrocity.

If you don't believe me, maybe Philip Butler, a fellow Prisoner of War with John McCain can convince you that he is not a good candidate as Commander in Chief. Butler said "The prisoner of war experience is not a good prerequisite for President of the United States. He was known as a very volatile guy and he would blow up and go like a Roman candle. John McCain is not someone I would like to see with his finger near the red button."