McCain's Afghanistan Town hall Meeting--07/15/08

[mscelina]

As promised, let's move on to McCain. Here's the link to his speech:

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/07/15/remarks_by_john_mccain_on_his_strategy_for_victory _in_afghanistan/

First, the Obama-slam:


Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan. And I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time. In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.


Here's a snippet about his strategy:

Our commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades. Thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them. But sending more forces, by itself, is not enough to prevail. In the 18 months that Senator Obama has been campaigning for the presidency, the number of NATO forces in Afghanistan has already almost doubled -- from 33,000 in January 2007 to about 53,000 today. Yet security has still deteriorated. What we need in Afghanistan is exactly what Gen. Petraeus brought to Iraq: a nationwide civil-military campaign plan that is focused on providing security for the population. Today no such integrated plan exists.

and McCain didn't ignore Pakistan either:

A special focus of our regional strategy must be Pakistan, where terrorists today enjoy sanctuary. This must end. We must strengthen local tribes in the border areas who are willing to fight the foreign terrorists there -- the strategy used successfully in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq. We must convince Pakistanis that this is their war as much as it is ours. And we must empower the new civilian government of Pakistan to defeat radicalism with greater support for development, health, and education. Senator Obama has spoken in public about taking unilateral military action in Pakistan. In trying to sound tough, he has made it harder for the people whose support we most need to provide it. I will not bluster, and I will not make idle threats. But understand this: when I am commander -in-chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide. In wartime, judgment and experience matter. In a time of war, the commander-in-chief doesn't get a learning curve.

Interesting all the way around. I like the tighter focus of this speech, but I still not convinced about some of McCain's initiatives. But, his point about unity of command is a sound one.

Anyone else?

[LimeyDawg]

I wonder who he's talking about when he says "foreign terrorists?". I'm also intrigued by his comment that the CIC doesn't get a learning curve. As I understand it, given the amount of time he plans to keep the war profiteering machine rolling, every CIC for the next century will get a chance to learn.

[rugcat]

I'm also intrigued by his comment that the CIC doesn't get a learning curve.Seeing as McCain has lately been referring to the Russian influence in Czechoslovakia, he might want a little time to get up to speed himself.

[LimeyDawg]

McCain still living the cold war? NOOOOOOO? Next he'll be calling them Soviets.

[Don Allen]

Well, if we don't stop spending our money on wars we can't win, people we can't conquer, and oil we can't steal... We going to be broke people...

[Don Allen]

My first question to Mr. McCain would be, What is our goal in Afaganistan.. Used to be getting Bin Laden, turned into getting the Taliban, now it seems we're going after Pakistan.
Second, and this is just history. The Afganies kicked the shit out of the Russians with American weapens in the 1980's, (see Charlie Wilsons war) Now their kicking the shit out of us with Russian weopens, uh hun, so why don't we do this, say, fuck um, bring our guys home and blow the shit out of them when ever we even think they are trying to hatch a terrorist plot.... I know, Don, you just don't understand the way things work, we need to see our kids die to be effective, well, I've seen our kids come home in those boxes and personally buried 2 good friends of the family, and you know what? I don't give a shit how you spin it, this war is pushing us closer to a depression with every passing day, we're still buring young men and women, and the result will always be the same, the minute we stop, the shit goes back the way it used to be,,,, and everyone knows it.....

[LimeyDawg]

Hmmm. The terrorists killed 3,000 on 9/11, and McCain calls them foreign terrorists in Iraq. The Iraq body count movement clains 90,000 civilian deaths from our response,
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ but a team of US and Iraqi epidemiologists put the number at 655,000 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html
Can you digest that for a minute. As either a direct, or indirect result of our response to an act of terrorism, we helped over half a million people get killed. And yes, yes, yes, I know that many of these are due to sectarian violence, but come on...655,000 dead??? Foreign terrorists, indeed.
In a moment of serendipity, I was reading "Jefferson Writings" last night. I read "A Summary View: The Rights of British America," in which Jefferson was complaining to the King of England about the repugnant way the colonialists' rights and business interests were being usurped, suspended and trampled on by the British. It's compelling stuff, really. The interesting part for me, as it relates to this post, was Jefferson's complaint that:
That in order to enforce the abritrary measures before complained of, his majesty has from time to time sent among us large bodies of armed forces, not made up of the people here, nor raised by the authority of our laws...
To render these proceedings still more criminal against our laws, instead of subjecting the military to the civil powers, his majesty has expressly made the civil subordinate to the military. But can his majesty thus put down all law under his feet? Can he erect a power superior to that which erected himself? He has done it indeed by force; but let him remember that force cannot give right."

We are all aware of what followed, of what was at stake. Yet we allow ourselves the pipe dream that, somehow, our intervention in Iraq is less illegal that that of the British in the colonial years, and that the violence will go away and our invading force will somehow be seen as welcome. The violence may diminish, but it will never end. We're the ersatz redcoats in this conflict, the extension of a government that seeks to intervene where it has no legal right to do so. And every day, the men and women of our military pay the price of a government operating beyond its powers while the civilian population is dosed into complicity by the soma of rhetoric. God Save the King (Bush)!