Victory and withdrawal, the two ends of the Iraq spectrum, are now likely to be the choices presented to the American public in November by Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. McCain constantly speaks of "victory" in Iraq and defeat of the terrorists, pledging -- key the applause -- that America will never surrender. Obama favors a timely and complete withdrawal from Iraq, a position that has come to symbolize the absolute over Hillary Clinton's middle ground position of transitioning and narrowing the mission.
If either victory or withdrawal is elected, I imagine that the public will expect its new president to implement his or her campaign pledge. Yet both, at least according to shrewd observers of the United States military and senior officers in the U.S. military command, are impossibilities.
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Of course there's rhetoric involved what the candidates say,
and maybe by next January McCain and Obama will move closer to Hillary Clinton in their recognition of what is possible given how much has already been thrown into the effort and the "trend lines" that the military is creating. Come 2009 though, boy won't the American public be shocked to find out despite what their candidates pledged, the powers that be in the national security establishment have other ideas of what will be.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2008/02/on_iraq_mccain_and_obama_have_1.html?nav=rss_blog