Does this count as a gaffe? Or just a huge difference of opinion. McCain says that Iraq, not Afghanistan, was the first “major conflict” since 9/11.
McCain:
The fact is we had four years of failed policy. We were losing. We were losing the war in Iraq. The consequences of failure and defeat of the United States of America in the first major conflict since 9/11 would have had devastating impacts throughout the region and the world.
In my mind, Afghanistan was a big deal and should have remained a big deal. That’s where the Egyptians and Saudis went for safe harbor as they were developing an organization with which to attack us on 9/11. A fair amount of Afghanistan’s dysfunction had to do with our policies there during the Soviet occupation and our lack of policies there after the Soviet occupation.
Afghanistan is a big deal, but war isn’t going to help anything there either. If we’ve learned anything during and since the Soviet occupation is that Afghanistan will not submit to occupation by a foreign power. While I do NOT support the return of the Taliban, I also believe the the Karzai regime is not much more than a US puppet. No amount of military force can force that nation to submit to the will of another, no matter how mighty. Our best chance at peace is to understand that self-determination and national pride are the way of Afghanistan. We cannot export democracy to Afghanistan via military action. We also must stop backing the military junta and Musharraf in Pakistan in the name of the War on Terror. The people of Pakistan will overthrow this dictaorship, and the US would be wise not to be supporting the regime when it goes.
Good point about Pakistan. My understanding is that our strengthening of the ISI (Pakistan intelligence agency) during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan led to a lot of unsavory results – including Muslim extremists in that organization sympathetic to al Qaeda.
Seems like it has a lot of potential to be the Ayatollah deposing the Shah all over again, only this time with nukes.
That’s pretty weak. Of course the granddaddy of them all is Obama saying he visited all 57 states.
Watch him say it:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws
No Byron, your grandaddy’s pretty weak.
Oh my god, he said 57 instead of 47, one time. It even sounds like he started to say 50, then backtracked to 47 (“one more to go, staff won’t let me go to Alaska or Hawaii”), but left the “forty” part off, so it became 57. How very damning indeed.
If that’s the “granddaddy of them all” then I’m feeling pretty good about his chances.
Comparing a slip about the number of states with making Iraq paramount over Afghanistan as a threat to us is silly. I call it both a gaffe and an indicator of what is so very wrong with McCain’s worldview.
From following the link back, here is direct link to the full transcript.
I think McCain was conflating activities in both Afghanistan and Iraq to speak of them in a unified way – not an unusual kind of thing in conversation, in my view. YMMV.
Parker
Going after the people that attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan was clearly justified.The country and the world were unified in our resolve to go after them. Iraq was an unnecessary, arguably criminal distraction/diversion from this endeavor.
To conflate the two is intellectually dishonest. Having said that, it doesn’t stop the Republicans from doing just that.
chuckcentral –
It may or may not be wrong to conflate the two efforts – but being wrong does not necessarily make it ‘intellectually dishonest’.
Some people sincerely believe that Afghanistan and Iraq are two closely related parts of a wider conflict.
Thus, I think you are engaging in an unintended ad hominem attack, which serves to dilute and distract from any arguments you make regarding the matter.
But, this matter is important, and the emotions involved run as high as the stakes.
It’s hard to keep characterizations of persons and motives out of it – especially when you suspect there are people who are either disputing in bad faith and/or reasoning from their conclusions.
The real question as I see it is “Where do we go from here, and why?”