On McCain's fantastical plan to win the war in Iraq

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, what do you know? John McCain has a plan for winning the Iraq War. How exciting! I'm sure it's the one we've all been waiting for from the warmongers.

Or not. Glenn Greenwald, who does about as good a debunking job of the possible '08 GOP presidential nominee as you're likely to find anywhere, puts it this way:

I don't think McCain even knows what to say about Iraq at this point — the Straight Talker refuses admit that it was wrong because he was one of the loudest cheerleaders for it, but there are also plainly no viable options to change what is occurring — so all he does is babble incoherently about it. As best I can tell, his position is that we need 100,000 more troops to win, and that young Americans one day are going to realize this and there will be a spontaneous and massive wave of volunteers eager to go to Iraq and fight in combat there because they will realize — like McCain and the President do — just how Very Important it is that we win.

Yup, it's McCain the Neoconservative, regurgitating the same old more-troops argument we've heard over and over again from Bill Kristol and his PNAC ilk. But with a twist. Called to service — surely not by Bush, who avoided his own call to service and whose concept of national sacrifice amounts to asking Americans to go out and shop — America's "young people" would dutifully sign up and head off to battle.

Oh, really? You think so, huh? You think America's young men and women see, or will ever see, the Iraq War as a "crisis" for America? Sorry, but the crisis is in Iraq, which seems to be slip-sliding ever deeper into civil war with each passing day. You don't think America's "young people" in whom you have so much confidence see that? You don't think they know about the death and destruction, the chaos and carnage? They aren't about to rush off to war. They aren't about to see the utter disaster you supported, and continue to support more ardently than some of its architects, as a noble cause. Don't ask them, and certainly don't expect them, to go off and die in the deserts of Mesopotamia for what is now an utterly lost cause.

This issue has passed McCain by. More troops may have been advisable back in 2003, but the American people have turned against the war and its architects. That's what the polls say, and the results of next month's votes all over the country may confirm it.

There is no popular support to send more troops over to Iraq. Even if there were, there are no troops to send, certainly not 100,000 more. And even if there were, how would Iraqis, insurgents and non-insurgents alike, respond to the sudden increase in what is almost universally viewed as an occupying force? Even if a larger force were able to overcome both the anti-American insurgency and the intra-Iraqi sectarianism, even if some semblance of peace were to be imposed at gunpoint, would not the resentment of Iraqis towards the United States increase? Would not the image of America as an imperial power be reinforced throughout the Muslim world?

The shark has been jumped, Senator McCain. It's over. We need a plan that involves getting out of Iraq, not one that would make a disastrous situation even worse.