MCCAIN’S EXPERIENCE DOES NOT LEAD TO SUPERIOR JUDGEMENT
John McCain is constantly flaunting his long and advanced experience in the military and the U. S. Senate as his qualifications for becoming president. However, his platform for which he stands is at odds with his conclusions.
A man of such superior experience should know that the surge was intended to thwart the insurgency in Baghdad so that the politicians could finish their job of fulfilling the eighteen points set down by the Congress as benchmarks that a viable government was alive and well in Iraq.
McCain says the surge has worked. Simply because the good Senator has been in the Green Zone two or three times surrounded by a cadre of U. S. troops and a helicopter shield hovering overhead to protect him from any insurgents’ that may be hiding in wait to assassinate him, gives no reasonable man concrete evidence that the surge has been working.
We cannot rely simply on the reduced number of deaths of U. S. or Iraqi forces, or the reduced number of road-side or suicide bombings since the surge was undertaken as a measure of its true success. Those troops were placed in harms way strictly for the purpose of giving time to the Iraqi political operatives to come forth with answers to the eighteen points, i.e. to decide on the political boundaries for each of the religious sects, to determine how the nation’s oil profits will be divided among the three Islamic groups, to update parts of the hurriedly written constitution and the manner in which that constitution can be modified in the future to name but a few of the political tasks assigned to the al-Maliki government.
Their batting average is disgusting low. To my knowledge three of the eighteen issues have been resolved.
Under the guise of statistics alone, McCain is partially correct. Twelve Americans were killed last month. In my mind that does not make the surge a success. Twelve American deaths are too many for a lost cause.
And let us not forget that those figures do not take into account the entire nation. The reduction in deaths and bombings has been limited to Baghdad, Basra, etc.
The Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr called upon his troops to retreat once the surge began. In other words, the Shiite militia has made little or no effort to kill Americans or to bomb our vehicles while the additional 30,000-40,000 U. S. troops were guarding the Green Zone and the capital city. Once Americans are redeployed, the Shiites will come out from under the rocks, behind the shrubs, from their homes and other remote hiding placing and inflame the Sunni genocide.
Two incidents occurred during the week of June 7-15, 2008. Al-Maliki assured Iran that no planes aiming for Iran’s nuclear production facilities or any other Iranian targets will be allowed to use Iraq’s airbases.
I thought the U. S. won the war. Our president stood on the flight deck of the U. S. S. Lincoln and announced to the world that the military combat in Iraq had ended.
In my opinion the U. S. dog is being lead around by the Iraqi tail. In our harried attempt to establish a democratic Iraq, we rushed to put a government in place not considering for one moment that any election held in Iraq where 60% of the population is Shiite would place in power anyone but a Shiite and therefore an Iranian sympathizer.
Al Maliki could care less about following the orders of the U. S. Congress. He wants our troops out of his country, to wipe out any residual Sunni opposition, to give the oil revenue to his Shiite supporters and get into bed with Iran.
In the opinion of many Middle Eastern experts, the Iraqi president will never come to terms with the Sunnis and the Kurds. Why should he. He and his Shiite compatriots have the votes to win any national election conducted at any time.
The older, wiser, more experienced military mind of John McCain, with all of the trips he has made to Iraq, still does not understand the depth of the error that Bush made in starting this war and appears not to be smart enough or experienced enough to realize that parties that have been fighting and quarreling for 1400 years are not about to come to terms with each other.
Also during this week, Moqtada al Sadr assured the head of the real power in Iran, the Guardian Council that he and his Mahdi Army would assist in protecting Iran from U. S. intervention.
However, the real news of the week was his announcement that he is beginning a campaign organization to back and support Shiite candidates for office in the upcoming elections and that he will divide his Mahdi Army into two separate divisions—one that will carry armaments and continue to attack “the occupiers,”(his name for American troops) and the other half will work on projects in the Shiite sections of the country to restore utilities and other services the government has failed to deliver.
This announcement by al Sadr tells me that the surge did not work. Throughout this period the surge forces have been guarding the city’s streets and eliminating the threat of the Shiite militia, the Mahdin Army under the command of the rebel cleric has simply been an army in waiting.
The heads of three of the country’s political parties have called upon the U. S. government to remove its forces from their country in order to reduce the hostility that the majority of the Iraqis (particularly the Shiites) feel toward the American occupiers.
In an interview with Newsweek Magazine in its June 16, edition, McCain accused Obama of trying to take us back to the 1960’s and 1970’s with “bigger government, higher taxes—and certainly not the same view on national security challenges.”
Either you are suffering from short-term memory loss or you are simply being expedient. It is Mr. McCain who is attempting to maintain the Bush policies which, indeed, bestowed upon us a much bigger government, the most discriminatory tax program of any administration in recent times by providing the bulk of the benefits to the top 1% of the of the country’s richest people while the rest of the country paid the bills. You are endorsing a war which the American people through their votes have instructed politicians such as Bush and McCain they want to be brought to an immediate conclusion.
And when it comes to national security, the Arizona Senator has little or no experience or knowledge that would enhance the safety of our already unsafe borders. While you would continue to spend $2-3 billion a week on a war you were ordered by the people to close out, the real threat to this country—al Qaeda is growing stronger and more threatening by the day.
You say you have 30 years of experience in national security, in fact, you have one year of experience 30 times over. You have learned little or nothing about keeping this country safe in a world of aggressive terrorism.
Obama is offering new ideas, more equitable distribution of the tax burden, spending our defense budget where it will enhance our nation’s safety while simultaneously destroying our enemy and winning the war on terror which until George Bush and John McCain through lies and manufactured intelligence thrust our troops into a war in Iraq where no terrorists previously existed. Hussein and al Qaeda did not share the same view of Islam; Saddam Hussein was a secular Islamist and al Qaeda members follow the Shiite teachings of Islam.
McCain criticizes Obama for not having visited Iraq for two years. If McCain’s thinking was so inextricably tied to the military mentality he would know that every trip to Iraq made by a U. S. Senator or Congressional Committee is nothing but a charade. The first time that McCain returned from Baghdad, either he was a fool or he did not know that the entire country had seen him on television walking casually through the streets of Baghdad for the sole purpose of demonstrating that it was now safe to roam about Baghdad without fear of being assassinated or blown to bits by a roadside or suicide bomber.
What he apparently did not know or simply refused to admit that he was guarded by approximately 100 U. S. soldiers with a fleet of helicopters overhead protecting him from the sky.
My point is that no visiting dignitary gets an accurate view of whether the surge is or is not successful. All of the hawks quote the stats like Polly the parrot or a broken record. It is the extenuating circumstances we should be analyzing. It is Moqtada al Sadr we should be listening to. It is the people in the streets away from the military escort who can tell us what is really happening there.
Bush and now McCain are insisting Obama must speak with General Petraeus to know the true story. First of all Petraeus, contrary to popular opinion, has become a political military man reporting to the president and the Congress what they want to hear.
More importantly, in case John McCain has forgotten, under our system of government, the president can not abandon his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief. He must call the shots—not Petraeus, not any other military commander, but the president, the Commander-in-Chief. One of fears should a military man become president he would relinquish his power over the war to those on the ground in Iraq rather than abiding by the will of the people who by the way are the real power in the democratic process.
In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC last week, McCain was asked that if the surge is a success, can we now set a date for our troops to come home. Mr.Cain answered:
: “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq, Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General [David] Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are.
“But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way. That way, they will be safe, and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama’s proposal would have done. I’m proud of them. And they’re doing a great job. And we are succeeding and it’s fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn’t realize “
“No, but that is not too important!” Senator McCain, are you going to look into the faces of the 160,000 mothers and fathers and tell them “that is not too important?” It is not too important when our troops are safely redeployed out of harm’s way? Are you so insensitive to the feels and desires of the American voters that you believe that it is not too important when our soldiers come home after servicing two or three tours of duty?
That Sir, is one of the dumbest remarks a candidate for president has ever made. Has all of the experience that you babble about every day on the campaign trail not taught you that when the troops come home is important to everyone, that it is important, that is may even be vital to our security and our economic future.
I can tell you this much, your experience was real, but your judgment is as weak as a thread in an Iowa blizzard. You do not have the judgment to sit in the Oval Office.
John McCain may have put his money on the wrong horse and he should be soundly defeated at the polls in November. We want no more wars that cannot be won in countries where the people do not want our brand of democracy and will not abide it for any length of time.
2:35:06 PM 
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