McCain's Easy Win

In the midst of the continuing battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, John McCain hasn't been getting the attention he so richly deserves, especially in the midst of his foreign policy posturing overseas this week.  His tough "straight talk" foreign policy experience is supposed to be what will give him the edge in being president.  He is betting that Americans won't think that he will make the same errors as W.

Putting aside his basic moral failure (but obvious political gamesmanship) to uphold human rights , Mr. McCain has shown us that he has little understanding for geopolitical forces at play in today's world.  In the Middle East he doesn't even seem to understand the most basic religious and cultural fault lines:

Today he told reporters that Iran was training al Qaeda fighters and sending them into Iraq. This is hilarious because of course Iran is Shiite and al Qaeda is Sunni, so they hate each other.

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."

Vinegar Joe Lieberman quickly intervened, suggesting that Iran is training Shiite extremists and sending them into Iraq. So there you have it, old foreign policy wonk and most-credible-war-on-terror-guy McCain can't remember which religious sect aligns with which ancient hatred, because he is senile.

Senile?  Or maybe he just doesn't give a damn about the people over there at all, other than we are going to have to kill more of them.  This mistake also eerily echoes one made by Chimpy the Prez before we invade Iraq:

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

Until this morning the mainstream press was ignoring one other fatal error in McCain's Iraq war closet record.  So we can thank the LA Times for putting it up front on their website (and assumably in their Sunday paper):

As America's war in Iraq enters its sixth year, Sen. John McCain is hoping that his long effort to send thousands more U.S. troops -- a "surge" that has helped lower casualties -- will propel him into the White House.

But McCain's record on Iraq is decidedly mixed. If the Arizona Republican proved prescient in his calls for a military buildup, many of his other predictions and prescriptions turned out wrong.

Before the war, McCain predicted a quick and easy victory, not a vicious insurgency. He issued dire warnings about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction but didn't read the full 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that showed gaps in the intelligence.

So it would appear that it is not just empty campaign rhetoric to suggest that a McCain presidency would be an extension of the Bush neo-con disaster.  That should gives us pause as the human costs continue to rise, and the "victory" of the "surge" begins to tarnish. 

tags: mccain  bush  lies  iraq  sunni  shia  

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