MCCAIN'S 'LATCH-KEY' WAR FINISHED BY 2010
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political ActivistFor weeks now, John McCain’s desperation was only beginning to set in–soon after Barrack Obama returned from his successful tour of the Middle East and Europe.
But ever since the Iraqi government wanted the US to start withdrawing our troops from that battlefield, John McCain’s desperation only increased ten-fold.
From his negative attack ads portraying him as a ‘celebrity candidate’ rather than a
real Presidential candidate–to his false troops ad which openly accused him of ‘shortchanging our wounded troops’–John’s perfect little ‘hero’ world has begun to fall apart at the seams.
Since the surge has worked to some degree, it’s only perfectly
logical that we withdraw our forces and focus them elsewhere–like Afghanistan for example. (But that’s only
if either candidate has a clue as to what is
really going on over there. This other war is totally different from Iraq.)
But why is John McCain accusing Obama of wanting to ‘legislate’
failure from the bench–when we are clearly
winning in Iraq?
Simply put, McCain is still trying to paint Obama as an inexperienced candidate whom can’t make the right decisions as President.
Unfortunately, what John McCain fails to grasp is that his unwavering support of an unpopular war has led the majority of Americans to say that this conflict was a
mistake–similarly echoing American opinion from another failed conflict only a generation ago. (Vietnam.)
Secondly, since we are
winning the war in Iraq, why not leave? The one question that John McCain has thus far failed to answer is this one:
Why do you feel the need to overextend our stay in a country that clearly wants us out
?
Is it because John wants one last ’gasp’ of a Cold War victory over an enemy that he can neither see nor properly identity in Iraq? Is it because he wants to put the ghosts of a painful past–finally to rest? (By sticking us in place inside a war that is now largely over?)
Or is it because John McCain himself doesn’t want to embrace the very victory that he originally set out to have?
A latch-key victory with strings still attached?
Whether or not he wants to accept it, John McCain must face the reality of the new Iraq. That when October 2010 finally rolls around–we are
gone largely from a country we illegally occupied for the last 7 years.
Victory or not, our job is
done.
It’s time to focus our troops onto something else.
Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1 at yahoo.comLabels: 2010, Barrack Obama, Iraq war, John McCain, negative attack ads, troop surge, troops, Vietnam, withdrawal
IF THE MILITARY SURGE IS SO ‘SUCCESSFUL’–WHY NOT JUST LEAVE?
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political ActivistThe moment this Iraq war started to turn itself around, the military brass started to panic.
What if things do calm down–then what do we do?No one had any answers to that question. Neither did Bush nor McCain–both a strong advocate of ‘staying the course till victory is
declared’.
The military surge was in answer to the spiraling, out-of-control violence that threatened to tip Bush’s Iraq war into complete chaos without any way back.
So in went 30,000 troops whom pacified much of Baghdad and the surrounding areas. And while that did seem to shake things up a bit, there was still no progress on the political front.
Just recently, Malaki demanded that the US draw up a time table by next year–a
withdrawal date for all US troops to leave his country.
That–in effect–set off alarm bells all over the place. Not just for the Bush cabal, the military brass, but McCain’s camp and his supporters.
“We can’t leave!”--was the rallying cry for all involved.
“Setting withdrawal dates just plays into the enemies’ hands!”How odd that they would make such a statement–wouldn’t you think? After all, if the military surge is a ‘success’–why not just take Malaki on his offer and get the hell out of Dodge?
Pull all our troops out and push them into Afghanistan–where the real war is presently?
Trouble is, this would play right into Obama’s campaign strategy of troops withdrawal within a year and a half of him getting elected President; whereas McCain just wants to continue Bush’s feeble excuse for victory–by keeping our troops in a country that wasn’t even a
threat to begin with, but no longer poses much of a challenge for our military forces in the here and now.
And neither Bush nor McCain wants to see Obama get a boost from a viable plan that clearly countermands what they've had in play for the last 6 years.The insurgency has pretty much died out by the time the surge was completed–with no measurable amount of enemy casualties to show for an effective campaign. The only thing that the military brass was using were ridiculous charts and bar graphs to
show our incremental surges of progress–but in the end, it didn’t have that
electrifying of an effect on Congress as it did have on Bush and the war profiteers.
You would think that they would've been happy
by now!But no...they still aren't.
Now–with Malaki demanding that we leave his country far sooner than McCain or Bush would’ve liked–the military brass is now more worried about everything being ‘undone’ by such a withdrawal or even a ‘timetable’ for such.
Why–if things were such a ‘success’? Why worry at all? It’s a bit puzzling how the military should be the exact
opposite instead of fearful and agonizingly uncertain.
As they are now.
Which means, that all this talk of “success” is either vastly overstated, or the plain fact of the matter is that the Iraqis and Malaki have finally grown tired of the US’s mess left at that their doorstop to clean up after 6.5 years of brutal occupation–
and have demanded
that they leave.No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.
And we have to leave; having overstayed our welcome.That is the nature of a war-torn country growing fed up with their incompetent occupiers--
is it not? Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1 at yahoo.comLabels: Bush, Iraq war, John McCain, Malaki, Obama, timetables, withdrawal
