Coming on the heels of this truly bizarre ad, today John McCain imagined what a dreamy place the world would be at the end of his first term:

The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

“Violence still occurs” — this must be what McCain meant when he said that “the war will be over soon…although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years.” Got that? The insurgency will go on, but the Iraq war will have been won. Just like the surge has worked, despite the past month of intra-Shiite violence, suicide bombings, the continuing lack of political reconciliation, and the empowering of Sunni tribal elements hostile to the central government. If this doesn’t look like success to you, it’s probably because you don’t have a reputation to rehabilitate.

In regard to the “smaller military presence,” does this mean that John McCain no longer wants to stay in Iraq for a hundred years? By our count McCain has shifted at least four different times on this question. Has McCain has discarded the fantasy of using Iraq as a permanent base from which to project U.S. power in the region? Wait until the next speech!

If this wonderful outcome McCain describes is achieved, and I truly hope it will be, it will have been achieved because Americans rejected the war policies of John McCain, which effectively amounts to the “sunk cost” fallacy of a gambling addict, with the promise of many future trips to the casino. It’s also worth noting that if a liberal candidate offered this kind of ponies-and-rainbows blather (try harder, Salter!), he or she would be mercilessly attacked, probably by John McCain. But John McCain will probably get a pass, because he’s a straight talker. Have you heard that he hates war?

In strong terms today, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized President Bush’s remarks to the Israeli parliament that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. Biden said it was “bullsh*t” and “malarkey” for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country “and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) directed sharp words towards the president as well, saying that Bush’s comments were “‘beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation” at the celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary. Watch it:

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel also noted that Bush had broken from the tradition that “when a U.S. president is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water’s edge.” “President Bush has now taken that principle and turned it on its head: for this White House, partisan politics now begins at the water’s edge,” said Emanuel. He added, “Does the president have no shame?”

In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said: “Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation’s history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round.”

Earlier today, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said that Bush “ought to apologize to the American people” while noting that the “Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense have both favored negotiations with Iran.”

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker meets with Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qumi in Baghdad, May 2007.

Reaching into the same old bag of tricks of politicizing national security, President Bush used a speech on the floor of the Israeli Knesset to divert attention from his administration’s record on terrorism and attack his political opponents in the United States.

It’s a little jarring to see an American president use a speech while visiting a major ally to engage in politics at home, but there’s nothing new in this approach -– President Bush has used national security as a domestic wedge issue unlike any president in the history of the United States. It was a winning formula politically for conservatives for a while in 2002 and 2004, but by 2005 the approach ran out of steam, collapsing under the weight of the Bush administration’s steady stream of failures around the globe, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this speech is that President Bush seems not only disconnected from the harsh realities of today’s Middle East -– he also seems disconnected from his own policies and their impacts on three counts:

1. Bush forgets that his own administration and other countries have engaged Iran. A focus of Bush’s speech was Iran and the very real threat it poses to stability in the Middle East. Ironically, the Bush administration itself has sent key officials on numerous occasions to meet with Iranian officials –- whether it was most recently sending U.S. diplomats to meetings on numerous occasions with Iranian officials to discuss Iraq, or coordinating closely with Iran in the early years of the Afghanistan war. Moreover, key U.S. allies like Britain, Germany, and France all engage Iran on a regular basis and in fact have embassies in Tehran. Did President Bush really mean to call these allies appeasers too? For example, should the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who met recently with Iranian officials, ask for an apology from Bush? What about most of the leaders of the Iraqi government, which is closely aligned with Iran? Should they be offended too?

2. Bush tries to avoid the fact that his policies have strengthened the hands of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and undermined Middle East security. A second irony in Bush’s speech is linked directly with today’s headlines –- that the Lebanese government was forced to reverse itself in the face of a violent takeover last week by the terrorist group Hezbollah. This comes less than a year after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip violently. These events are directly related to numerous policy failures by the Bush administration – including the failure to deliver support to pragmatic allies in the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon. As a result, the Lebanese and Palestinian people have suffered from violence, instability, and economic stagnation. And as a result, Israel’s security has been weakened -– another irony given that Bush was speaking on the floor of the Israeli parliament.

3. Bush ignores the 2002-2008 conservative record on terrorism. A broader blind spot that comes crystal clear from Bush’s speech today –- he is incapable of acknowledging that his administration’s policies have been ineffective in responding to the threats posed by global terrorist groups. This blind spot is perhaps understandable, because Bush has invested so much of his legacy in a strategy that has led to a more than four-fold increase in global terrorist attacks by 2005, a trend that has only increased in the three years since.

It might have been easier for President Bush to point the finger at his domestic critics in the early years of his administration and get away with it. But in the last nine months of a lame duck administration, it is time that President Bush stopped running away from his own record and face the reality of his own dismal record on terrorism. Al Qaeda remains a threat, its top leadership like Ayman Zawahiri regularly taunts the United States, and Iran has seen historic expansion of its influence throughout the Middle East –- all national embarrassments that no number of speeches by President Bush can cover up.

Delivering an address before the Israeli Knesset today, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists.

Obama quickly responding, criticizing Bush for using the “60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack.” As MSNBC reported, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), a strong supporter of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), has also now issued a statement, saying that he wholeheartedly agrees with Bush’s comments:

President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that — if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers — they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.

Watch it:

In an interview with MSNBC, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) sharply criticized both Bush and Lieberman, saying that the President should apologize to the public for politicizing the 60th anniversary of Israel:

What an irony to have the current president in Israel blasting Democrats from the Knessett when his policies have actually seen al Qaeda get strengthened. They have seen al Qaeda be reconstituted. They have seen al Qaeda get stronger, Hamas get stronger, Israel more threatened, Iran is stronger, and Iraq is in chaos.

This is a disgraceful statement by the President. It really is. He ought to apologize to the American people for going to Israel and using the Knesset and the celebration of the 60 anniversary of a state and a people that we all support and that we’re all proud of, and using it for politics.

Kerry also noted that if Bush is saying that he is against talks with Iran, then he should “come home and call for the resignation of his own cabinet, because the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense have both favored negotiations with Iran.”

While delivering an address before the Israeli parliament commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. CNN reports that Bush was comparing Obama to “other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis.”

In his speech, Bush said, “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

CNN’s Ed Henry reported that, while “President Bush never uttered the words Barack Obama,” his White House sources tell him it was clearly intended to be a partisan shot:

White House aides are acknowledging that this was a reference to the fact that Sen. Obama and other Democrats have publicly said that it would be ok for the U.S. President to meet with leaders like the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Watch it:

President Bush may want to take up his head-in-the-sand views with his own Defense Secretary. Just yesterday, Robert Gates said the U.S. needs to “sit down and talk with” Iran:

“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage…and then sit down and talk with them,” Gates said. “If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.”

Bush’s cross-continental partisan assault upends the traditional notion that U.S. politics should stop “at the water’s edge.” Reacting to Bush’s comments, Obama issued this statement: “It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel.”

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