Discussing Afghanistan, McCain Dodges Question On ‘Whether We Should Have’ Invaded Iraq
Discussing Afghanistan, McCain Dodges Question On ‘Whether We Should Have’ Invaded Iraq
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been a regular face on the Sunday morning talk shows this year, primarily because, as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos has said, he “is the leading GOP voice on Afghanistan” (despite the fact that he has consistently been wrong about the war there.)
McCain made his 14th Sunday show appearance since January on CNN today to discuss Afghanistan. During the interview, McCain again called on President Obama to ramp up U.S. troop levels there, modeled after the “surge” in Iraq. “Many see a parallel to Iraq in the sense that it’s been eight years in Afghanistan now it has been billions of dollars” and “we have shed American blood there,” host John King said. But McCain didn’t want to go there:
MCCAIN: First of all, rightly or wrongly we were focused on Iraq. I happened to believe we had to win there. Whether we should have gone in or not, weapons of mass destruction, you covered on other days.
Watch it:
McCain probably doesn’t want to discuss “whether we should have gone in” to Iraq or WMD because at the time, he got it all wrong. Just like Bush administration officials, he hyped the Saddam-Al Qaeda link and Iraq’s non-existent WMDs and said war in Iraq would be easy and that Sunnis and Shias would “probably get along” after Saddam because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.
And as New York Times columnist Frank Rich noted in a scathing column today on McCain, it isn’t all that clear how much the “surge” contributed to reducing violence there or if that strategy can be transferred to Afghanistan. But also, Rich noted that, “What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan”:
Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.
If McCain has been so demonstrably wrong about these wars in the past, why is the Beltway media so eager to call on him time and time again for his views on Iraq and Afghanistan?
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I don’t know why he would dodge that. It is the easiest question in the world. OF COURSE we shouldnt have invaded Iraq. The answer is easier than what is ice made of
October 11th, 2009 at 10:48 amThank you Caribou Barbie for saving America from this embarrassing old coot.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:49 amTo the Sunday talk show hosts,
McCain put his ideas up against Obama’s in the last election and McCain’s view of the world lost. Why do you continue to have him on as a guest? He doesn’t speak for a majority of the country, and at times his campaign had to admit that he wasn’t speaking for them, either.
You guys think you have to present “balance”. You don’t. That flawed idea presumes that both sides have valid viewpoints. The right wing side hasn’t had a valid idea in decades. Stop putting conservatives on your programs and giving them a platform from which to spew their ignorant, wrong-headed views, as if they were perfectly valid points of view based on a perfectly valid set of facts. They are nothing of the sort.
The Republicans lost the elections for a reason – the American people reject their way of doing things. Stop giving them legitimacy they neither earned nor deserve.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:59 amWhy is it that the Republicans are so free and loose with committing Americans to do battle when they themselves have not answered our country’s call?
After doing some research here is a snapshot of our brave Republicans in the Senate:
Bennett National Guard57-60
Cochran 1959-61 Navy
Enzi National Guard 1967-73
Graham Air Force1982-85
Inhofe Reserves 1957-58
Isakson National Guard 1966-72
Lugar Navy 1957-60
McCain Navy POW – Hero
Roberts Marines 1958-62
Sessions Reserves 1973-86
Wicker 1976-80
ALL THE REST DID NOT SERVE AT ALL.
As a Vietnam vet, I find amusing that many of the brave republicans who were age eligible to serve did not. They simply DID NOT SERVE. Another thing, in order to get into the National Guard or Reserves back then you had to be connected, rich, or very lucky.
I am calling out only the Repugs, because it is they, not the Democrats who seem to be willing to gamble with other peoples lives.
And don’t get me started on Limpball, Beck, Hannity and the rest of that crowd.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:00 amWhy? Because people – their audience – prefer to buy the lie rather than admit they were wrong.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:08 amMaybe if McCain had dodged the draft like just about every one of his Republican and neocon buddies, we wouldn’t be subjected to his pathetic blather now.
Instead, he’s a ‘war hero’. And a Presidential candidate. Who picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.
The rest is history.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:09 amtexasrick, you are right on.
If these Republican neocon idiots want their wars, they need to 1) bring back the draft and 2) raise taxes to PAY for them.
Instead, we get Republican neocon idiots USING wars to scare Americans and win elections. That business model’s shelf life is now, thankfully, finished.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:11 amBriseadh na Faire says:
If McCain has been so demonstrably wrong about these wars in the past, why is the Beltway media so eager to call on him time and time again for his views on Iraq and Afghanistan?
Why? Because people – their audience – prefer to buy the lie rather than admit they were wrong.
I’m not convinced that’s the case, because I don’t think that “people” are necessarily the audience for these shows, nor that the audience really has anything to say about who gets on the air. It’s the tiny circle of “journalists”, pundits and “experts” that form opinion in this country and they’re all quite comfortable hanging out with each other and keeping the national debate on their terms.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:19 amGrandpa McCain is remembering less and less each day. Is it a disease or willfull ignorance? I’m going with the willfull ignorance line like most of the repugs are practicing now in regards to Iraq.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am#7 Daddy-O
You make the point of raising taxes to pay for their wars…that made me chuckle.
We both agree that they only give TAX BREAKS to the wealthy and leave all the hard work to the Democrats to fix their mess.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:30 amIf McCain has been so demonstrably wrong about these wars in the past, why is the Beltway media so eager to call on him time and time again for his views on Iraq and Afghanistan?
October 11th, 2009 at 11:35 amThis is to show us that we made the correct choice in who should be President!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frankly Johnny the Taliban doesn`t want our money like the Iraqi`s did plus Afghanistan is not a country with big city`s that can be walled off like in Iraq,but if we helped Afghanistan as a whole to rebuild their infrastructure we might gain some allies and friends to help combat the Taliban we could save some lives from the indiscriminate bombings that have done harm to our image to the very people we are trying to covet.No, more troops is not the answer unless you are a war mongering neocon.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:42 amWe need to move OUR country from being run by the MIC. Were it not for them and their strangle hold on OUR government we would be a more PEACEFUL nation.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:01 pmMcCain is just another Republican political hack who is going to oppose Obama no matter what he does.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:12 pmI shudder to think of where we’d be today if the old warmonger and caribou barbie were in office.
That McCain is asked to appear so frequently on Sunday news shows is confounding – he lost the election (thankfully) and he has been wrong on our national defense too frequently for him to be credible.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:14 pmPoor ol’ Mc5th choice.
I would think that at this stage in his life and career he would like to have somewhat of a better “legacy” instead of continuing to embarrass himself.
The de-facto leadership of the wingnut party, the Limpos, Baboons, mAnns and other assorted rabble rousers don’t think much of him.
Even Moose Boogers has dumped him and stole the Mooooverick image with her.
Funny how Keith Olbermann depicts the gNOpig logo as a dinosaur.
And Mc5th choice seeks to sink further into the mud instead of trying to get out.
BOMB!
BOMB!
BOMB!
BOMB!
BOMB! Iraaaaaaaaaaanaan
BOMB! Iraaaaaaaaaaanaan
Sure, gramps. Refuse to admit how the gNOpigs caused a monumental cluster fk over the last eight years and now they refuse to go along with any Democratic proposals because the gNOpigs are putting party over country.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pmAt this point in time repugs are left with nothing but to pretend, pretend about everything the shrub did, pretend about the American people……….
October 11th, 2009 at 12:21 pmEight years of war in Iraq were not included in the budget.
Repugs have no problem spending us into debt all while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest of individuals.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pmRepugs have no problem dismissing the ills that afflict Americans at home.
Repugs have no problem in sending the working class to fight their (profit-motivated) wars.
Repugs have no problem cutting all government programs designed to help the working class (the ones whose bodies they need to fight their endless wars) under the self-acclaimed guise of being fiscally prudent.
Repugs have always had one goal in mind: get rich, help their friends get rich, dominate the world — they seem to emulate the Roman empire.
Because McCain is helping to keep these profitable, for a few, military operations going as long as possible. Of course he is wrong. Another six months. Another six months. Another six months and he will be wrong again and again and again and called back for more wrong agains.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:25 pmFrom above:
Because they are owned or controlled by the Military Industrial Complex.
Example: GE advertises, but, the products they promote are not purchased by the majority of Americans. They advertise the products that only a small handful of executives in the Military Industrial Complex or closely related to it would have any interest in.
It’s media bribery to stay in line and keep their mouths shut!!!!!
October 11th, 2009 at 12:30 pmThe Sunday Morning talk shows have given McSenile 14 chances to rally the republican base. FAIL X 14. Will you have another?
October 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pmLast paragraph, Ben Armbruster’s blogpost; “If McCain has been so demonstrably wrong about these wars in the past, why is the Beltway media so eager to call on him time and time again for his views on Iraq and Afghanistan?”
Perhap’s the problem arises because the same reporters and journalists who tout McCain as a “war hero” are convinced and have convinced many others that he has some special insight into military affairs and warfare.
He is quite knowledgeable about the military; most veterans are, but I would argue that he has no wonderful insight into strategy and that any insight he has into tactics goes not much further than what he can extrapolate from having been an operator in air warfare. It’s obvious his opinion isn’t any better than anyone else’s and that in some cases, it’s worse.
The remarks regarding the Saddam Hussein – al Qaeda connection and WMDs in Irag are a good indicator of his deficiencies. Anyone with reasonable knowledge of Saddam Hussein and the Baath would know that any cooperation between Hussein and al Qaeda would be shortlived and tactical. If al Qaeda’s leaders had been stupid enough to try to base themselves in Iraq, they’d have ended up dead and Hussein would have seized control of the organization for himself. Hussein and the Baath were much more secular than religious, and Hussein wasn’t the kind of tyrant who tolerates a competing power on his own turf. I think that Saddam Hussein was also not so stupid that he would have sponsored an attack of the magnitude of the NYC 9/11 event. For McCain to support the notion that there was some tie between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that put Iraq in the position of having some responsibility for 9/11 just demonstrates McCain’s gullibility and ignorance.
The WMDs were more problematic. A reasonable number of people were pretty sure that Saddam Hussein would have liked to have had that capability in his arsenal. He’d certainly had the programs in the past and for chemical and biological weapons, there was no evidence that he’d ever had his programs stopped or completely ripped out. By the time the inspection team was thrown out just before the war started, I think it was clear that he hadn’t started his nuclear weapons program again. Be all that as it may, his possession of any of those weapons was not a justification for going to war, and the fact that his possession was only alleged, rather than proved, renders the argument for war on that basis null; it’s no fracking good. But rather than acknowledge that, McCain would still justify the war on those grounds or dance around the subject; it’s another demonstration of his unreliability as an analyst, particularly in the politico-military realm.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:53 pmFrom Frank Rich’s Excellent Smackdown column:
“The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” [McCain] wrote. “The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”
This shameless argument assumes — perhaps correctly — that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already DID make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003 —
Al Qaeda was On the Ropes…and then this Insane Decision to Attack Iraq …gave them the Opportunity to rise, Phoenix Like, from the ashes of Defeat.
McCain bears Much Responsibility for leading the Charge into this folly….and the Citizens and Troops now in Afghanistan are paying the price.
October 11th, 2009 at 1:28 pmVirtual Pebble says:
Intellectual curiosity is not one of McCain’s big traits. Nor is it for Palin either.
October 11th, 2009 at 1:53 pmNo, we should have never embarked on the Iraq invasion.
That cataclysm has caused so much needless death and destruction, as well as the tremendous strain it has placed on our domestic economy, a strain which we may never quite relieve.
The Iraq stupidity is the principal reason that I will not even consider a vote for any
October 11th, 2009 at 3:51 pmrepiggie, even for local office.
Re: McCain: he’s a ‘war hero’
John McCain is just a grumpy old man who can’t get over the fact that a Black guy is in the WH so he is doing everything can to obstruct.
Now, for this war hero business: I can never get anyone to tell me what McCain did to make him a war hero. For being captured and held prisoner? What about the hundreds of other Americans who were captured and held prisoner by North Vietnam? What are they, chopped meat?
Let me state for the one thousandant time, Grampy McCain WAS NOT the only American POW held captive in Vietnam. Grampy, the republicans and what passes for media continuing to parrott the “HE was a POW hero” meme does not make it so.
What did he do to make him a war hero?
Figures for actually how many Americans were held as POW are not actually known. Or how many actually died while POWs. Officially, 661 recognized prisoners were returned; some 100 or so of those have since died. All endured sickness, starvation, and torture. Most of them went on to live full productive lives without grampy’s pa and money clearing the way.
These returning 661 POWs are just as much of a hero as grampy. Why aren’t they ever mentioned? One thing that sets them apart from grampy is that they did not spend their lives as Noun Verb POW. Nor did they have an admiral father who made sure that the records dealing with POWs were sealed.
Many people to this day believe that some POW MIA’s may still be alive in Vietnam. Grampy really gets bent out of shape and hostile when anyone brings up the possibility that American POWs were left behind or that some POW MIA’s may still be alive in Vietnam today?
I find it fascinating that none of the 661 returned POWs still alive today were involved in grampy’s presidential campaign.
You know, telling us what a great hero and all he was?
October 11th, 2009 at 3:51 pmWrong Way McCain. (per Frank Rich).
What a perfect nickname for Sen. John McCain…as well as the rest of the Republican Party…and even a few Blue Dog Democrats.
Where there is a right way, a common sense way, a sane way, McCain, the Republicans and the Blue Dogs will always choose the wrong way, the illogical way, the costly-to-our-country way.
But you see, McCain, the Republicans and the Blue Dogs are part of the corporate protection racket in Washington and on Wall Street, a racket that runs Congress to a large extent, the White House (whoever is in it), the Supreme Court, the news media, the privatized part of the U.S. military, with corporate protection racketeers putting profits over people and the well-being of our country all the time.
Consumer protection? HA!!, say the corporate protection racketeers. Consumer protection laws would get in the way of corporations making a profit, just as an outbreak of peace (or Nobel Peace Prizes) would get in the way of war profiteers making a profit.
And Wrong Way McCain is part of this culture of corporate corruption that profits at the expense of all other U.S. citizens, American workers, the ill and U.S. soldiers alike, which is why he keeps being asked by corporate executives in the “liberal” news media to appear so often on talking head shows, as do so many other Wrong Way Republicans and Wrong Way Blue Dogs.
There’s a right way and a wrong way, and the Wrong Way Republicans stopped being right a long time ago when they decided to sell out our country for thirty pieces of silver.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:14 pmAs someone who is unfortunate enough to have him (and Kyle)for our state’s Senator, I agree with almost all of the previous comments. My hope is that President Obama will rise above the hawks and pull out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:32 pmhe “is the leading GOP voice on Afghanistan” (despite the fact that he has consistently been wrong about the war there.)
the fact that mccain is always wrong is why he is a leading republican voice, and why corporate media like georgie snupalupagus force him on the American people. Being wrong on everything is what all the republican violentarian whack jobs do.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:46 pmclose minded liberal says: oh ok, john “we can muddle through afghanistan” mccain is an expert now. yea whatever you say ‘liberal media’
October 12th, 2009 at 3:05 amJohn McCain is not the war hero all of America believes he is. Sure he was shot down and held captive for 5 years and as a military Veteran, I honor his service. That does not mean that I think he knows anything about war. McCain’s real military history is one of privilege, rule breaking and a tantrum throwing baby, acting like a spoiled brat throughout his time in service. In fact, had he not disobeyed a direct order, he would have never been shot down in the first place. Counting this particular crash would have made it 4 planes Mr. McCain destroyed. Most Aviators are discharged after 2 crashes. Had it not been for the history of his father and grandfather, he would have never been admitted into the flying school. This guy’s entire life is a façade but we Americans, we love our tough guy war stories. His true history of “wrong-way McCain” projections would fill a small book! We would do well, as a nation, to stop following this idiot.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:03 amThere were 3 elements in Iraq that converged to turn that war around. The first actually started before the surge was even announced. That was arming the Sunni Awakening Councils. The second was the troop build-up and that at first went quite badly as the number of American’s killed skyrocketed. The 3rd, and perhapse most important, was the unilateral cease-file called by al Sadr.
The war lords in Afghanistan are hardly the same thing as the Awakening Council’s in Iraq so that option is missing. The Taliban will not likely call a cease-fire as al Sadr did so that option is also missing. That leaves only the troop build-up, and from looking at the increased number of American deaths, is proceeding along the line of that portion of the Iraq surge that was the weak link. McCain is simply ignoring reality to think that Afghanistan can be fought the same way as Iraq. He is an old General still fighting the last war. History does not treat these old General’s kindly. It will not treat McCain kindly.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:44 pmOn the trail for McCain, Pawlenty dodges VP questions. gögüs küçültme estetigi
October 17th, 2009 at 4:08 amThank you for your sharing.!
October 17th, 2009 at 10:47 am