Posted on 02/19/2008 7:53:07 AM PST by seanmerc
If Americans want to continue the Iraq war, then Sen. John McCain -- the apparent Republican presidential candidate and relentless hawk -- is their man.
It seems McCain was not kidding when he said the U.S. might have to remain in Iraq for 100 years. At a town meeting in New Hampshire, McCain was told that President Bush had indicated the possibility of U.S. forces staying in Iraq for 50 years.
“Make it a hundred,’’ McCain responded.
Presumably McCain means that would still be with a volunteer U.S. army because even the “straight talking” senator would not dare to suggest that a military draft would be needed to carry out his grand imperialist plan for Iraq. Not if he wants to get elected.
Meantime, Bush is no longer keeping up his charade of party neutrality. In an interview last Sunday with Fox News, Bush described McCain as a “true conservative,” who is in lock-step with him on a strong defense, against abortion rights and in favor of making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, with the biggest cuts for the richest.
While apparently endorsing McCain as his successor, Bush also cautioned that McCain needed to shore up his standing with GOP conservatives. In other words, Bush is hoping for a third term through a proxy.
McCain has shown some heresy with the conservative wing of the GOP by displaying leniency toward illegal immigrants. He also went against the conservative grain by sponsoring legislation intended to reform campaign finance.
The right wingers in the party -- especially the hard-line radio talk show commentators like Rush Limbaugh -- have lashed out harshly against McCain for his apostasy. But these critics have no other place to go.
After losing the nomination to Bush in the 2000 race for the presidential nomination, McCain has devoted a lot of time to wooing evangelicals and pandering to the far right in his party. Early on, he made amends with the late Jerry Falwell and delivered a commencement address at Falwell’s “Liberty College.”
In his earlier campaign for the presidency, he had denounced the evangelicals as “agents of intolerance.”
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” seems to be the motto of the ambitious McCain.
Citing McCain’s statement that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 100 years, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has indicated that if she is elected she would seek a much quicker withdrawal. Both Clinton and her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., are all over the place when it comes to their preferred timing to pullout U.S. forces from Iraq.
Clinton’s Senate votes to attack Iraq and to fund the war have become her albatross. She needs to clarify her position.
McCain is on the same page with Bush in foreign policy. He supported the “surge” of sending 30,000 more troops to reinforce the occupation of Iraq. And he has denounced colleagues who want to bring the troops home as raising the “white flag” of surrender. He also supports the total U.S. commitment to Israel and proposes to intensify U.S. aid and technology to give Israel a “qualitative edge” over the beleaguered occupied Palestinians.
He also warns that Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons clearly poses an unacceptable risk.”
He parts company with Bush on torture, having suffered for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Stressing his conservative credentials, McCain says he is against federal farm subsidies and against “big government mandated health care.”
He also opposed the new Medicare prescription drug law, claiming it saddles the taxpayers with hugely expensive entitlement programs. McCain is trying to bend over backward to prove to the GOP he is the leader who can win the independent vote and continue the party’s occupancy of the White House.
But with Bush’s unpopularity in the polls, is the president a help or a hindrance to McCain’s bid for the White House?
Helen Thomas can be reached at hthomas@hearstdc.com
P.S. Hey Helen, it’s Liberty University, not Liberty College. Try checking your facts once in a while!
It’s really strange, McCain bugs me too, but for different reasons. Glad to see the old nag is troubled though......
Don’t worry, Helen, you won’t have to suffer thru it.
100 year war... and Helen will make sure she covers it from beginning to end.
If we don’t get a better slate for POSTUS, the US won’t exist in 100 years.
She is 'lying her butt off'--when she claims that McCain wants,,,"A HUNDRED YEARS WAR in Iraq". That is outrageous. McCain has never said that. I challenge her or Obama to prove that statement. Why don't the Republicans challenge her or Obama to prove it?? We already know why the MSM gives him a free pass to lie like that.
McCain has NEVER said he wants a WAR for a hundred years. If the MSM cannot make the DISTINCTION between a "presence" (which IS what McCain said) and a "WAR"--then they must think we are still at WAR in Japan, Germany, and Italy.
Obama makes that outrageous claim,,,,and yet the Republicans (McCain in particular) still don't 'call him on it'!!!
If McCain is going to let Obama BLATANTLY LIE and SMEAR him like that,,,McCain will lose by even more than I already think he will.
“It seems McCain was not kidding when he said the U.S. might have to remain in Iraq for 100 years.”
Well, I might have to vote for the backstabbing McCain after all, if he is thinking that clearly regarding the GWOT.
Next to putting al Qaeda itself in a constant defensive posture, I always assumed the second most important goal in the War on Terror was establishing a PERMANENT forward military base right in the Islamist assholes’ backyard.
How can we miss her if she doesn’t go away?
This is basically easy.......Either pull out of Iraq, letting the terrorists take over....or....drop the big one on them, killing a 100,000 or let the war go on and kill a 100,000 or our boys and girls. To me, they aren’t worth a 100,000 of our kids.
It should be noted that the war bagan in 1991 and we are already 18 years into the hundred.
If we really want to get real, the back dating can be to 1979 and we are already nearly 30 years into the war.
We’ve been in Europe and Japan for 64 years now and Korea for 54. What’s the point?
She was around for the last one, so I guess she doesn’t want to go through it again.
Seriously, we should at least study a plan to give free reign for the Turks to absorb Iraq and Iran, in exchange for creation of a Kurdish homeland.
“If McCain is going to let Obama BLATANTLY LIE and SMEAR him like that,,,McCain will lose by even more than I already think he will.”
McCain is going to have a hard time going on the offensive against the Dems while he is trying to shore up his base. That’s what happens to a candidate who doesn’t have a united party behind him. As a result, his message is going to sound very muddled and contradictory to the electorate, which will provide a huge opening to the MSM to define him, instead of his campaign defining him.
Or how about continuing our current winning strategy in Iraq and taking down other terrorist regimes (in Syria, Iran etc.)?
Makes certainly more sense than either pulling out or that ridiculous knee-jerk notion that we can just “nuke the Middle East”...
Good question - what IS the point of a large military presence in Germany now that the Soviet Union is gone? What IS the point of a large military presence in Japan now that Emperor Hirohito is long dead?
There’s about 200,000 troops permanently stationed in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, and more rotationally deployed. So much for the Founders’ vision of no standing Army.
“The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.” - Ronald W. Reagan
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