I’ve seen a good deal of mockery of this McCain campaign poster on the grounds that he seems to be more angling to be God’s successor than George W. Bush’s but less on the underlying claim that he somehow possesses a unique level of wisdom necessary to bring about peace:

In fact, McCain has a notably thoughtless approach to the world situation. A good case in point is his Russia policy which is focused around the silly idea of needlessly antagonizing Moscow by kicking them out of the G8. This hasn’t gotten a ton of attention because there hasn’t been much focus on Russia issues throughout the campaign. Which is fine as far as it goes, but as Matt Duss points out Russia policy has broader implications including for high-profile issues like Iran. But to deal with the Iranian nuclear program in a reasonable way, we need more rather than less cooperation from the Russians. That means, among other things, showing the wisdom to avoid picking fights with them on secondary subjects.

Folks know that I like counterfactuals, so I thought I might muse on a point that I think’s gotten too little attention. Thus far, discussion of tactics in Iraq has tended to focus on either the question of whether things could have gone better had we gone in with a larger force and better counterinsurgency tactics in 2003, or else on how big of a positive impact the “surge” had over the course of 2007. Another point worth considering, however, is whether smarter policy back in 2005 couldn’t have avoided the mass bloodshed of 2006 and early 2007.

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Spencer Ackerman has some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan on the record against the McCain campaign’s sleazy new slanders against Barack Obama. It was while over there that I saw this truly stunning post from McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb in which he tries to argue that to point out that McCain doesn’t know when the Anbar Awakening happened is per se to attack the troops.

But to be as clear as possible, there were American soldiers serving in Iraq for years long before the surge began. To observe that something or other (say, the Anbar Awakening) couldn’t possibly have happened because of the surge (because it happened before the surge) is by no means an effort to “deny American troops credit” for their work. The very Colonel (now General) McFarlane whose work McCain was citing as evidence of the success of the surge really did do good work, as did the men under his command. It’s just that their work didn’t have anything to do with the surge. Which is what Barack Obama was saying. And it’s what John McCain was ignorantly denying.

Now the irony here is that the origins of this whole farce is McCain’s efforts to hog credit himself for the adoption of improved counterinsurgency tactics. He “knows how to win wars,” remember, and the evidence for that is supposed to be his embrace of the surge. But he can’t even get basic facts straight.

There’s some understandable skepticism about the idea that sending more troops to Afghanistan is the right way to go, but stories like this one about how a newfound desire to avoid civilian casualties is curbing the use of airstrikes over there highlights why additional troops might be useful. Fewer civilian casualties is a good thing on its own terms, and it’s strategically smart to boot. And to reduce civilian casualties you do need to reduce airstrikes.

But commanders don’t ask for air support for no reason, they do it because firepower is useful. Troops on the ground can, however, provide firepower with a great deal more precision and discretion, sparing civilian lives and keeping the population on the side of our efforts.

Today’s Washington Post editorial on Iraq has a very definite Pravda vibe to it — sure we all saw, watched, and heard the Iraqi government repeatedly endorse an Iraq strategy along the lines of what Barack Obama has proposed, and repeatedly reject an Iraq strategy along the lines of the Bush/McCain perpetual war for perpetual occupation strategy, but here comes Fred Hiatt to tell us that’s not what happened at all. The logic chopping and mixed up facts are stunning but no more so than the Post‘s bold declaration that fighting al-Qaeda is a less important national security priority than is military occupation of Iraqi oil fields:

Mr. Obama’s response is that, as president, he would have to weigh Iraq’s needs against those of Afghanistan and the U.S. economy [...] While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

It’s important to be clear about what’s at stake when it comes to Iraqi oil. Lots of oil is already under the control of hostile (Iran, Venezuela) or not-especially-friendly (Russia) governments. But that doesn’t deprive American consumers of oil. Nor does it make oil more expensive. The Saudis and the Norwegians don’t sell us discount oil. There’s a global market and a global price. The American consumer filling up his tank doesn’t see a difference if the oil’s from Mexico or Equatorial Guinea or Kuwait, doesn’t see a difference if the oil’s owned by TotalFinaElf or ExxonMobil or Citgo. War for oil doesn’t mean cheap oil for you.

What it does mean is protection for companies that have invested in Iraqi oil. Those fields could be a good investment. But there’s a lot of “political risk.” And insofar as Iraq is playing host to a large occupying military force and has a government that’s dependent on that military force to stay in power, that political risk is mitigated. Which is great if you have a contract to drill for Iraqi oil, but really stinks as a national security priority for the United States (and it’s bad for the economy to boot). Certainly I wouldn’t say that it’s more important than taking the fight to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden.

UPDATE: See also Ackerman.

Tim Fernholtz, a new American Prospect writing fellow, is becoming must-reading. Here he is with a good question about McCain’s “listen to the Generals”-centric policy agenda:

But it raises this important question: If John McCain knows nothing about the economy and most domestic issues but wants to be elected based on his foreign policy, which is apparently ‘do whatever David Petraeus says,’ why not have McCain do a surprise endorsement of Petraeus and drop out? It would certainly be easier than crafting a coherent foreign policy.

The whole notion of listening to commanders on the ground as an alternative to listening to the Iraqi government is a bit bizarre. I mean, suppose President McCain is inaugurated in January. Then Prime Minister Maliki says, “we want US forces out within two years.” People want to know how McCain will respond. And he says . . . ask General Odierno. But at this point unless General Odierno is totally unfamiliar with the constitution, he’s going to have to . . . turn around and ask the White House what the administration’s policy is. After all, there’s a substantial difference between a military deployment in support of a foreign government and one taking place in the face of opposition from that government.

Citizens for Global Solutions is a great organization committed to a liberal internationalist approach to the world (the UN, multilateral nuclear disarmament, foreign aid, that kind of thing) and they put questionnaires out to congressional candidates and have posted the answers they got. Some of these candidates impress more than others, but of course the people you really need to worry about are the ones who don’t bother to respond.

Max Boot tries to rationalize staying in Iraqi no matter what Iraq’s government says. First:

This is part of a pattern for Maliki, who, though he won office and has stayed alive (literally and politically) with American support, has hardly been an unwavering friend of the United States — at least in public. Although he was an opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime, he was not a proponent of the U.S.-led invasion.

Some might see in this Maliki as something of an Iraqi patriot or if one wants to put it in less ennobling terms, a nationalist. A guy who doesn’t like to be oppressed by Saddam Hussein but also doesn’t like to see foreigners conquer his country. Not that Bush is Saddam by any means, but surely I’m not the only American who sympathizes with the view “don’t like the current government, wouldn’t support foreign conquest.” After all, maybe Maliki just thought that once the Americans were in Iraq, the proponents of the invasion would insist on staying forever — no matter what the Iraqi people or their government wanted. Sure, that’d just be a paranoid conspiracy theory, but you know how prevalent those are in the Arab world.

So based on that Boot says we can safely ignore Maliki and just pay attention to different Iraqi leaders who he liked better. Brigadier General Bilal al-Dayni, who commands troops in Basra, for example was quoted in the Post as saying “we hope they will stay until 2020″ which Boot tells us “is similar to the expectation of Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Qadir, who says his forces cannot assume full responsibility for internal security until 2012 and for external security until 2018.”

Boot should perhaps consider that the current downswing in anti-American violence is very likely to become an upswing again if the United States insists on not only ignoring Iraqi opinion and Iraq’s duly appointed leadership on this issue, but does so in a way that signals we’ll never leave unless we’re driven out by force.