McCain's blind spot on Iraq, Vietnam

[BlueButGlad2]

Ellen Goodman Boston Globe, July 25, 2008

McCain's inner circle (has begun) to get snarky. They keep referring to Obama as "The One" and complain that the maverick boytoy McCain has been replaced in the media's heart by a new trophy wife named Barack ...

Gary Hart once said, "In a way, John is refighting the Vietnam War." For a long time, the former prisoner of war has believed that Vietnam should have, could have had a different ending. Americans lost the war because they lost their will. He's thought more about the sorry last chapter of that war than its foolish beginning.

So, too, his attention on Iraq has been less on the war's origin than on some undefined victorious conclusion. McCain jumped the shark when he accused Obama of wanting to win an election even if it meant losing a war. But even before that intemperate charge, he said something equally damning: "The fact is, if we had done what Senator Obama wanted to do, we would have lost."

McCain starts the historical clock running after the invasion and even after the surge. For all his complaints about the media, he's been able to focus the Iraq debate on the surge's success. He has said repeatedly, "I'm proud that I was right. That's what judgment is about. That's why I'm qualified to lead."

But what if "we had done what Obama wanted to do" in 2002, when he was a lowly state senator and an opponent of invasion? We wouldn't have roared into this disaster.

in the recent, rejected op-ed, McCain said that by advocating timetables for withdrawal, Obama was "emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the 'Mission Accomplished' banner prematurely." Dear John: Wasn't the "worst mistake of the Bush administration" launching the invasion at all?

Americans are in a $10 billion-a-month war with more than 4,000 dead and 30,000 wounded. We've watched the current president deny and deny that he was wrong in invading Iraq. If there's a bottom-line, rock-solid qualification for being the next president, it's a candidate who acknowledges just how badly we were misled. So far, Obama's The (Only) One

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/07/25/mccains_blind_spot_on_iraq_vietnam/

[BridgeTheGap]

1. McShame conveniently ignores uncomfortable facts...n.t