War Is Over (If You Don't Want The Troops Home)

A novel approach to the question of how long we'll remain in Iraq by John McCain.

“And by the way, that reminds me of this hundred year thing. I was asked in a town hall meeting back in Florida, how long would we have a presence in Iraq? My friends, the war will be over soon, the war for all intents and purposes although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis. ... "

Interesting. So the war ends very soon, for everyone except... the groups fighting the war, which he calls "the insurgency." And we can't leave because the insurgency will go on for years and years, even though the Iraqis will be handling it, which would make it... a war between the Iraqis. And we have to stay and babysit that.

I thought this was even more important a quote that McCain's admission yesterday that if he can't sell the war to the public, he'll lose the election, a remark he'd tried to back off of, but one everybody already knew. That's not particularly insightful. His muddled, asinine logic about what constitutes a war "ending," however, is significant.

Democratic groups are already gearing up to make McCain and the Republicans pay on Iraq. Russ Feingold is pushing a vote to cut funding for the war, but also to do something more specific, which I think will be an excellent vote to highlight come November:

Feingold’s second bill – S. 2634:

• Requires the administration to present a report to Congress within 60 days of enactment outlining its global strategy for defeating al Qaeda and its affiliates. The report shall include an analysis of the relative threats in particular countries and regions and recommendations to ensure that U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic assets are best deployed to meet those geographic threats.

• Requires the administration to develop a strategy ensuring that deployments do not undermine military readiness or homeland security, and that reserve units are not deployed more than once every four years and regular units are not redeployed more than once every two years.

This will fail because Republicans have no strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda other than claiming their political opponents are in league with the terrorists. This offers the chance to draw a clear contrast.

Second up, VoteVets.org has an ad up in the DC market, riffing off of McCain's "100 years" comment and tying it to the economy (the opportunity costs of spending trillions in Baghdad).



This must have polled well, as a new group, with the support of John and Elizabeth Edwards, has sprung up with the purpose of tying the war to the looming recession. I still think that the war has been a kind of Works Progress Administration propping up the economy to a degree, but that's only benefiting defense contractors, and clearly our absurdly large defense budget is impacting the greater economy by draining resources and delaying attention to other sectors.

"There's a great concern and anxiety, angst out there among most Americans about their economic security," Edwards said in a teleconference from North Carolina. "All these things are made much worse by concern about what's happening in Iraq ... People don't understand why we're spending $500 billion and counting in Iraq."

Edwards added, "The American people are going to have a very clear choice this fall -- a Democrat who will bring this thing to an end ... and Senator John McCain who will continue the war." [...]

Groups taking part in the new campaign are the Center for American Progress, USAction, MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org, Service Employees International Union and Americans United for Change.

That's a formidable group. Good to know that we'll have some manner of fiscal parity when it comes to the 527s (which I personally don't like, but you can't unilaterally disarm in the face of $250 million from Freedom's Watch).