Democrats are congratulating themselves on the political cleverness of the cheap shots they are taking at Sen. John McCain over his already-famous “100 years in Iraq” comment.
What McCain said at a townhall meeting in New Hampshire in January was inarguably true. He was asked about President Bush’s comment that we could stay in Iraq for 50 years. McCain replied, “Make it 100. We’ve been in South Korea . . . we’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day.”
The statement speaks for itself. If we prevail in Iraq and the violence ends, American troops can be stationed there just as they are in other peaceful, strategically important countries such as South Korea and Japan. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have suggested that this means McCain “wants to fight a 100-year war,” in Obama’s words. This is so obvious a distortion that it must backfire against Democrats over time, especially if they nominate Barack Obama, who has so loudly advertised his commitment to civil discourse (at least outside of church).
Democrats have long been counting on the Iraq war being a big political bonus this fall, but that is by no means guaranteed. McCain is a staunch supporter of the war who is not associated with its initial failures because he was warning against them from the beginning. As early as November 2003 he gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that identified the need for a surge in Iraq, even if no one was calling it that yet.
He correctly diagnosed the strategic imperative on the ground: “Security is a precondition for everything else we want to accomplish in Iraq. We will not get good intelligence until we provide a level of public safety and a commitment to stay that encourages Iraqis to cast their lot with us, rather than wait to see whether we or the Ba’athists prevail. Local Iraqis need to have enough confidence in our strength and staying power to collaborate with us. Absent improved security, acts of sabotage will hold back economic progress. Without better security, political progress will be difficult because the Iraqi people will not trust an Iraqi political authority that can’t protect them.”
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