John McCain's last remaining shred of credibility as a presidential candidate rests on the assertion that he demonstrated his superior foreign policy expertise by calling for "the surge" in Iraq even as the majority of Americans and American politicians (including his rival, Barack Obama) were calling for troop reductions. The media takes both the success of the surge and McCain's foreign policy competence as givens. Both claims are debatable and one is laughable.
The surge was announced in January, 2007 and consisted primarily of the deployment of 20,000 additional troops, mostly in the Baghdad area. By September, General Petraeus announced that violence had been significantly reduced. The reduction in violence is not generally disputed. If one puts aside the question of whether "reduced violence" is a meaningful measure of success, one is still left with the question of how much of the reduction in violence should be credited to the surge and how much should be attributed to other events and factors that coincided with the surge. There can be no precise answer to this question, but it is interesting that other important contributing factors are seldom even mentioned in the American media. Here are a few of those factors:
1. Mahdi Army ceasefires. Starting in August, 2007, the influential cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, issued a call for a ceasefire. He extended the ceasefire in February of 2008. He ordered another ceasefire in May, enabling Iraqi troops to enter and occupy the Sadr City stronghold. In August he ordered the majority of the Mahdi Army militia to disband.
2. The Anbar awakening. Despite Mr. McCain's confusion on the subject, the Awakening movement started prior to the surge. The U.S. began supplying arms to the Sunni tribes to use against Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006. This was an enemy of my enemy alliance and is credited with pacifying Anbar province in particular. Arming and training these tribal forces could also amount to trading one problem for another as the militarization of the tribes may result in conflict with the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq in the future.
3. The years of violence preceding the surge resulted in large-scale ethnic cleansing. Approximately 2,000,000 Iraqis became refugees in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Close to 3,000,000 are domestically displaced refugees within the borders of Iraq, having been driven from their homes by sectarian strife. Many neighborhoods are calmer now because most members of the minority have been massacred or fled. Celebrating the resulting peace in this case is like cheering for the fire going out after the house has burned down.
These points are not made to disparage the surge, only to put it in the context of other events outside the media focus which are also significant contributors to the current situation in Iraq. The more important point to be made concerning the media's obsessive attention to the surge is that it displaces other stories and commentary on the war. Thus, the story of the "surge success" has become a substitute for a broader perspective on McCain's role in promoting and cheerleading the Iraqi invasion and occupation. His history of support for the catastrophic decisions leading up to this point is the true measure of his judgment and fitness to be commander-in-chief. A brief recap of some of Mr. McCain's activities and policy statements in regard to Iraq is instructive.
McCain was president of the New Citizenship Project which was founded by neoconservative William Kristol in 1994. The New Citizenship Project became a fundraiser for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) founded by Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1997. PNAC's original members included Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bolton, and Rumsfeld among others.
In 1998 McCain co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act which was drafted by Trent Lott staffer Randy Scheunemann for PNAC and called for a policy of regime change. Mr. Scheunemann is now McCain's chief foreign policy adviser. The Act designated seven groups that were eligible to receive funds including Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress which received $98 million. President Clinton signed the bill, making regime change official American policy. Almost immediately after 9-11, McCain began advocating an American invasion of Iraq.
In 2002, along with Joe Lieberman, McCain became a co-chairman of another PNAC-founded group, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI). Scheunemann was CLI's executive director. McCain and the neocons championed the cause of Chalabi and eagerly latched on to Chalabi's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. The group successfully lobbied for the war and was disbanded afterward. Chalabi has long since been discredited.
Early on during the war, McCain was a strong supporter of Rumsfeld and was among those who thought the war would be "easy" and that we would be greeted as liberators, that "Iraqis will be grateful."
McCain's current claims that he was an early critic of the conduct of the war are not supported by his public comments at the time.See a utube clip of McCain's Greatest Iraq War hits here:
http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=ZOCeQDHUTw8&feature=related
Recapping McCain's record on Iraq: he allied himself with the neoconservatives and bought into their vision of a benvolent American empire; he was a prominent supporter of regime change in Iraq prior to 9-11; after 9-11,he was an early and vocal supporter of an invasion of Iraq while being hoodwinked by Chalabi and his stories of WMD and ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein; and finally, he subscribed to the cakewalk and "we will be greeted as liberators" theories.
But it's all OK because he "called the surge." This is the product the media is packaging and a lot of people are still buying it.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
