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Opinion: You can’t <i>handle</i> the straightness!

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This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Today, presidential hopeful John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave what was billed as a major policy speech on Iraq. As the resident McCain skeptic in the house, I thought I might add minor value by making a few blow-by-blow comments, after the jump.

Cherry-picking some of the senator’s comments, in order of utterance:

Unlike the veterans here today, I risked nothing more threatening than a hostile press corps.

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McCain has probably received more positive treatment over his lifetime from the press (who he once referred to as ‘my base’) than any other living senator. And while it’s true journalists are souring on him, you don’t have to look far to find such non-hostile contemporaneous press notices as: ‘That [philosophical] core, especially on matters of national security, is simple and so deep-seated that people who know him suggest it can’t be changed. It’s not about a political position McCain has taken. It’s about who he is.’

[M]y only mission [in Iraq recently] was to inform my opinions with facts.

You don’t have to be anti-McCain to distrust any candidate in the midst of a presidential campaign alleging that any action was taken ‘only’ in the service of gathering facts, let alone a tour of the single-most debated topic in U.S. politics. Also, there was some question as to McCain’s fact-dissemination veracity during the trip.

I would rather lose a campaign than a war.

263 cites and counting!

[T]he vast majority of Muslims are trying to modernize their societies to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

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If a majority is 50.1%, what’s a ‘vast’ majority? According to a scientific poll of two Copy Desk editors, it’s around 72.5%. There are roughly 1.5 billion Muslims in the world; that would mean close to 1.1 billion of them ‘are trying to modernize their societies’ all 21st-century style. Does that sound like an accurate characterization of, say, these majority-Muslim countries? I’m not so sure.

Many in Washington have called for an end to our involvement in Iraq. Yet they offer no opinion about the consequences of this course of action beyond a vague assurance that all will be well if the Iraqis are left to work out their differences themselves.

Really? ‘All will be well’? Checking through the main war heaves of the Democratic front-runners, Hillary Clinton says ‘the choices that one would face are neither good nor unlimited.’ Barack Obama doesn’t sound particularly optimistic. John Edwards may be heavy on the wishful thinking, but hardly giddy.

Some argue the war in Iraq no longer has anything to do with us; that it is a hopelessly complicated mess of tribal warfare and sectarian conflict. The situation is complex, and very difficult. Yet from one perspective it is quite simple. We are engaged in a basic struggle: a struggle between humanity and inhumanity; between builders and destroyers. If fighting these people and preventing the export of their brand of radicalism and terror is not intrinsic to the national security and most cherished values of the United States, I don’t know what is.

How many American wars could this logic justify? Twenty? Thirty?

America should never undertake a war unless we are prepared to do everything necessary to succeed, and unless we have a realistic and comprehensive plan for success. We did not meet this responsibility initially. We are trying to do so now.

In other words, we weren’t ready, so we shouldn’t have undertaken this war, which is why we should escalate. Got it.

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Responsible political leaders - statesmen - do not add to the burdens our troops carry. That is what Democrats, intentionally or not, have done by failing to provide them with the resources necessary to succeed in their mission.

Statesman John McCain, in October 1993, said: ‘There is no reason for the United States of America to remain in Somalia. The American people want them home, I believe the majority of Congress wants them home, and to set an artificial date of March 31 or even February 1, in my view, is not acceptable. The criteria should be to bring them home as rapidly and safely as possible, an evolution which I think could be completed in a matter of weeks.’

(Photo by AP)

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