McCain's plan a mystery, does one even exist?
Sen. McCain has criticized Sen. Obama for his exit strategy for Iraq while President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki now seem inclined to embrace Obama's plan for a timeline for troop reduction and withdrawal.
It's easy for McCain to pass judgment on Obama's position for the simple reason he actually has one. McCain, on the other hand, has failed to articulate any plan for disengagement. McCain seems to be comfortable perpetuating one of the fundamental errors of the Bush administration regarding Iraq, which is to have entered into an armed conflict with no plan for disengagement.
McCain insists that setting an artificial timeline for withdrawal is a tactical and dangerous mistake. Perhaps it is, but it's a start. McCain offers no alternate plan for withdrawal. If McCain would identify measurable goals that should be met to support a withdrawal he'd have the seed of a plan.
But he fails to offer any such goals. If McCain would articulate how he, as president, would define success in Iraq it would give the voter something to evaluate. But he offers no such insights. One would think that with all of his self-acknowledged foreign policy experience he could come up with something better than, well, nothing. As to the success of the "surge" I find in completely and sadly laughable that Bush and McCain have spun a dire error in judgement regarding troop and asset deployment in to some clever military tactic.
The 'surge" was necessary because insufficient numbers of troops and assets were originally deployed. This caused an unnecessarily higher number of casualties and injuries than would have occurred if enemy strength had been accurately assessed and an adequate number of troops and assets had been deployed to deal with the enemy in the first place. Unfortunately we are seeing the same mistake being made in Afghanistan as civilian deaths have increased by 40 percent and attacks against coalition forces have escalated as well.
Obama has identified Afghanistan as the primary theatre of conflict with terrorism and has suggested he would redeploy troops and assets from Iraq to that location. He's spot on with that assessment and supported by military leaders on the ground in the region. It's funny that of the two candidates the guy with the least amount of foreign policy experience seems to have a better handle on things than the sage and wise veteran that McCain purports himself to be.
Thomas Arnold
Grayslake