Whenever he's asked about how long he's going to keep troops in Iraq, John McCain pivots and invariably talks about the peaceful future Iraq with a long-term troop presence like that in South Korea. It's bonkers--no Muslim country is going to allow that kind of continued deployment, and when one considers that bin Laden often cites US troops in Saudi Arabia as a cri de coeur for his antics it seems like a bad idea.
The question that one has to ask one's self, though, is why is this such an embedded principle? Why doesn't McCain say, "Well, the surge worked, and now we can leave Iraq having left the Iraqis a safe country. Maybe it works out, maybe not, but we've given them the opportunity. It's time for them to stand on their own two feet." Why this continued insistence on the residual forces?
Honestly, I don't really think McCain's thought this through, but I don't think that one can rationalize it any other way than by using the "e" word. Yes, empire. McCain likes having US power deployed across the world. So, maybe it's a softer, gentler form of empire, but it's still empire. I mean, it seems really important to him that we have those troops there, since this is something he always says. What other explanation can there be for this fixation?
Oh, and by the way, this is bollocks. McCain was wrong about Iraq every step of the way until he backed the surge. He's batting, like, .050. He deserves some credit but, then again, let's not forget about the law of large numbers. Yes, the surge has turned out to work alright--it hasn't made things worse, but it also hasn't accomplished its chief strategic objective of spurring political change by providing breathing room for political dealing. It's worked tactically by guaranteeing security but there is a difference between the two. I do think Obama ought to acknowledge these not unpleasant side effects of the surge while saying that the security gains strengthen, not diminish, the opportunity of getting out while avoiding defeat. And when one considers that the Iraqis have made noises about asking America to leave in the shadow of the security improvements I don't think that the surge's success, such as it is, is necessarily a crippling blow to Obama's argumentation on Iraq, so long as he's crafty in how he deploys the argument.
