This, in a nutshell, is McCain’s plan for U.S. involvement in Iraq.
McCain has said that we must stay until we have victory in Iraq. Victory means a stable and secure Iraq where no U.S. troops are getting killed. And, once U.S. troops are no longer getting killed, we can stay forever.
Reviewing the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, and counting the declarations within it highlighted into three categories — WMD, supporting terrorists, and enforcing UN Security Council resolutions — there are roughly 10 of each. So it’s two-thirds wrong. But that one-third about enforcing UN resolutions, which can be boiled down to enforcing “security and peace in the Persian Gulf region,” apparently provides for McCain’s “forever” involvement in Iraq.
As a presidential candidate, it makes sense that he would drop the repetitious six-month projections to victory, especially because the authorization requires a bimonthly report and projection — and rather define victory in two terms. Shorter term, the end of attacks on US troops in Iraq (as he has stated). Longer term, enforcing security in the Persian Gulf region, which takes 50 years, 100 years, or forever. On this forever commitment, I’m not getting how we would be the UN’s security force without proportional commitments from the other UN members.
Well, that pretty much makes it like everything else we’ve done in foreign policy in the 20th & 21st Centuries. We’re still in Germany. Still in Japan. Haven’t heard any “serious” candidates talk about undoing this for… my entire lifetime.
We got out of Vietnam, anyway — pursuant to Nixon’s “secret plan” and had “peace with honor” or something.
McCain’s enormous problem here is that he a) can’t describe what victory looks like; b) can’t describe a path from wherever we are now to whatever victory is; and c) suggest an outer limit of what sort of expense is unacceptable in going from A to B.
I agree with Mike. If the Democrats are so concerned with costs, let’s see them pull out of Japan, Germany, South Korea, and Kosovo first.
Then we can talk about getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan.