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McCain Has No Clue On Iraq (and Lou Dobbs is a Hack) |
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I was away from my computer all day and didn’t hear until this evening about John McCain’s statement that “it’s not too important” to know when American troops can come home from Iraq. I was having dinner at a restaurant that was showing Lou Dobbs’s show, which I could see, but not hear. Dobbs started off with three straight anti-Obama stories–one headline was that a top adviser was stepping down (not clear to me that Obama’s VP vetter is actually a “top adviser”), another story (deceptively described as “breaking news”) featured the weeks-old video of a preacher who supported Obama speaking out against Clinton. The 4th story was headlined “Obama v. McCain on Iraq”. I could tell something was up when I saw text explaining that Lieberman was explaining for something McCain had said, but the headline didn’t make clear what was going on. I found out a bit later exactly what McCain had said–Matt Lauer asked him when the troops will be coming home from Iraq, and McCain said that’s not too important, the key question is the casualty level–you’d never know it from Dobbs’s “bury the story” headline.
So Lou Dobbs is a charlatan–not exactly news. But the McCain story needs to get attention, for multiple reasons. First, as others have observed, McCain’s statement doesn’;t exactly support the troops, who probably think it kind of matters when they will be coming home. It also underlines that McCain has no understanding of Iraq or the Middle East. He still believes that it would be a good thing to have a long-term military presence in Iraq. McCan insists that the key question is how many casualties are suffered. That’s not the only issue. As long as American troops stay in Iraq, we continue to lend credence to extremists who argue that American forces are in the Middle East as conquerors and occupiers. In addition, our military forces are far from infinite. Troops that remain in Iraq are not available to respond to threats elsewhere. Finally, there is the enormous expense–money spent in Iraq is money not spent on health care, alternative energy, education, and other items.
McCain is his own worst enemy. If he can get tripped up by Matt Lauer, he’s going to have a hard five months ahead of him.
