McCain Calls For Escalation In Iraq, Suggests Putting More Troops On The Ground
McCain Falsely Claims Most American Oppose Timetable For Iraq Withdrawal
On NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called for immediately adding more U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq. Echoing the failed strategy behind the escalation during the Vietnam War, McCain suggested that putting more troops in the middle of Iraq’s civil war would help the U.S. to ultimately prevail….As former administration officials and military generals have noted, a larger initial force was necessary to provide security on the ground and prevent the growth of the insurgency. But at this point in the conflict, a larger force is operationally impracticable. Slate’s Fred Kaplan wrote last year that the Army could maintain its current troop levels in Iraq, but it doesn’t have the capacity to “allow George W. Bush to send more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan” unless we institute a draft.
Man, just when I’d begun to suspect that perhaps John McCain might be a decent and reasonable Republican (I keep hoping that’s not an oxymoron), he goes and inserts his size-13s in his mouth. In a time when the majority of Americans are beginning to realize that what we have on our hands in Iraq is this generation’s Vietnam, McCain is arguing for an ESCALATION of the number of American troops in Iraq. Now I find myself wondering if McCain hasn’t lost his @!#$%^& mind…or if he really is trying to convince Conservatives that he’s one of them and that he’s not about to advocate “cutting and running”.
If ANYONE should be appreciating the Vietnam-like qualities of our involvement in Iraq, you’d think it would be McCain, who not only fought in Vietnam, he spent several years as a “guest” of the North Vietnamese government at the Hanoi Hilton. Few men are more qualified to truly understand what a clusterf—k Iraq has turned into. For him to now be advocating the committing of yet more troops into the Iraqi meatgrinder is something I finding truly unfathomable. I suppose this is what happens when a Republican who at one time seemed to possess a functional pair of cojones smells the possibility of being elected President. Of course, McCain wouldn’t be the first to sacrifice his priinciples and sense of decency in order to be installed in the Oval Office. One needs look no farther than the currrent mediocrity inhabiting the White House to understand how the lure of becoming the most powerful man in the world will induce a man to become something other than what he is.
I can think of no good reason to increase the number of American troops in Iraq…and an increasing number of Americans are coming to that conclusion as well. With now more than 2,600 Americans having given their lives for…well, for nothing , really…Sen. McCain is now seriously proposing that we condemn yet more young Americans to senseless, pointless deaths?
WE DESERVE BETTER.
