Sunday, July 20, 2008

Is McCain really the author of the "surge"?

In a word, no. During the pre-surge years, his subsequent mythmaking nowithstanding, he spent at least 80 percent of the time totally supporting Bush and Rumsfeld and saying that the war was going great. He supported the surge when it came due to a simple kneejerk rule that he follows at all times: among all the politically credible options that are on the table in U.S. foreign policy debate, he always supports the most hawkish and pro-war alternative out there. Putting more soldiers in Iraq fit this simple formula, so he supported it.

Some may still recall that Democrats were saying for years that Bush and Rumsfeld had put too few troops in Iraq given that we were there. But that has been effaced from memory like the war with Eurasia in 1984 once they've switched to fighting Eastasia.

Interesting how Maliki's endorsement of Obama's Iraq plan is not even considered newsworthy in the major U.S. papers. Apparently it didn't happen.

Sorry, I will get back to my fiscal policy topics but every now and then I need to blow off a little steam.

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