Last night Fox News, host Greta van Susteren asked former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) what he thought of reports that President Obama plans announce his intention to send 34,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. McCain said he’s not concerned about how many troops Obama is sending, he just wants to succeed — regardless of whether we have an exit strategy or not:

VAN SUSTEREN: What do you think about that? Is that a decision that — that you think is a wise one or do you want the full 40,000 that was originally requested?

MCCAIN: Well, I’m not so much concerned about the number because I understand that it may be additional allied troops to help out, too. I’d like to look at the overall strategy. I would like to see the emphasis on succeeding, not on an exit strategy.

Greta, the exit strategy takes care of itself once you succeed just as it did in Iraq. But I’d like to hear the whole thing. I hope the president will make the right decision here. And I would like to support him if he does.

Watch it:

At least McCain is consistent; an exit strategy for the war in Iraq has been of little concern to him as well. When running for president, the Arizona senator and fervent Iraq war supporter said he would “be fine with” the U.S. military staying in Iraq for “a hundred years” and later “excitedly declar[ed] that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for ‘a thousand years’ or ‘a million years,’ as far as he was concerned.”

Indeed, as the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss has noted, McCain’s knee-jerk reactions to the crises in Iran last June and in Georgia last October, and now with his “no exit strategy necessary” policy, reminds the U.S. of the bullet it dodged last November by not electing him president.

Obama reportedly plans to announce an exit strategy in the coming days.

Former-Bush-spokesperson/forever-Bush-flack Dana Perino made a pretty startling claim last night on Hannity in the course of questioning the Obama administration’s avoidance of the term “terrorism” in reference to the Fort Hood murders:

PERINO: There is one thing that I would say about Fort Hood that I feel very strongly about, which is — and I don’t say this to be political — I think it matters a lot what we call it. And we had a terrorist attack on our country. And we should call it what it is because we need to face up to it so that we can prevent it from happening again.

HANNITY: I agree with you. And you know, why won’t they [the Obama administration] say what you just so simply said?

PERINO: It’s — they want to do all of their investigations, I don’t know all of their thinking that goes into it, but, you know, we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during president Bush’s term. I hope they’re not looking at this politically. I do think that we owe it to the American people to call it what it is.

The decision whether or not to call an act of violence “terrorism” — which is, after all, defined as the use of violence against civilians in the pursuit of a political goal — is inextricably bound up with politics. Though I tend to lean toward “yes,” I think there are real questions as to whether Nidal Hassan’s shooting spree qualifies as terrorism. Those who think there aren’t tend to be die-hard “war on terror” types interested in marketing a particular (and politically advantageous to conservatives) conception of an undifferentiated Islamic threat.

Obviously, a former Bush official waxing sanctimonious about the politicization of national security is, to say the least, bold. It’s a matter of public record that the Bush administration was exploring ways to exploit 9/11 for political ends literally before the fires had been doused at Ground Zero.

As to Perino’s claim of “no terrorist attacks under Bush,” one of the main Bush legacy talking points handed out to administration officials as Bush was leaving office was “No terrorist attacks… since 2001!” Maybe Perino just forgot to mention that last part. Or perhaps Perino has gotten so used to insisting that the administration she served actually had an effective strategy for fighting terrorism that she’s simply come to believe that the attacks took place before Bush’s presidency began.

Another side of this, though involves effort, thus far unsuccessful, by some conservatives to cast Fort Hood if not exactly as “Obama’s 9/11,” (which would be ridiculous on its face) then at least as a “terrorist attack” sufficient for their purposes of attacking Obama’s response to the shooting as insufficient, and his broader counter-terrorism approach as ineffective. A Google search of “Fort Hood, Obama, Pet Goat” turns up quite a bit, none of it making much sense, but revealing nonetheless the continuing conservative shame at President Bush’s response to the September 11 attacks, and a deep desire to believe that President Obama’s response to tragedy was just as bad, if not worse, than Bush’s.

Conservatives have been telegraphing this tactic for while. As far back as January 2009, Robert Robb complained in the Arizona Republic that “Bush has been given remarkably little credit or appreciation for the fact that there has not been a domestic terrorist attack since 9/11,” but went on: “If, however, there were to be a terrorist attack during Barack Obama’s watch, the public’s view of Bush would spin on a dime.” It should be pretty obvious that Perino and others are trying to use Fort Hood to change the public’s view.

Richard Grennell, the Bush administration’s UN spokesperson, writes a love-struck op-ed claiming that his old boss John Bolton was right all along when he said negotiating with the Iranians was pointless:

Someone needs to say it now. John Bolton was right. When the Obama Administration proclaimed victory on October 1st by announcing that a break-through had been reached in Geneva and that Iran had committed to shipping 2,600 pounds of fuel to Russia, expert Iran watchers were appropriately cynical… Bolton, however, was the first to stand up and call the Iranian pronouncement a sham – and he did it within hours of the announcement.

This misses the point entirely and demonstrates a totally one-dimensional view of diplomacy that was endemic during the Bush administration. During the Bush years, figures like Bolton blustered endlessly about Iran, but despite all of this empty rhetoric, nothing came of it. Iran accelerated its nuclear program, leaving the Obama administration to deal with an Iran well on their nuclear way.

Furthermore, the Bush administration’s refusal to engage Iran prevented an international consensus from emerging. Our European allies, Russia and China weren’t willing to support stronger action against Iran as long as we refused to even try diplomacy. And the threats of war from figures like Bolton only served to make the United States look like a hyper-aggressive belligerent power, further undercutting any hopes of gaining a tough international consensus. In the end, Bush left office with a divided international community and with Iran closer to developing nuclear weapons.

The point of Obama’s decision to engage Iran was to put the onus on the Iranians and force them to decide whether they are with the international community or against it. Our willingness to engage in serious talks, and Iran’s willingness to reject them, has made Iran the bad guy and given us the credibility to establish a more robust international response.

Far from being wild-eyed optimists about talks, the Obama administration and progressive foreign policy experts thought it quite likely that Iran would reject talks. Sure, the best case scenario was that Iran would decide it was in their self interest to abandon the prospects of developing nuclear weapons in exchange for improved ties with the west, but this was always the best case scenario. So while Obama has been engaging Iran, he has also been working to significantly strengthen the international community’s stance on sanctions should the Iranians walk away. The US and Europe, which were frequently at odds during the Bush administration, are now largely in sync. This is crucial since any effective sanctions policy requires the Europeans, which have a lot more economic leverage over Iran than we do. Additionally, the improved relationship with Russia has increased the prospects that Russia will support tougher sanctions on Iran.

There is still a lot of uncertainty as to what will happen. But by engaging Iran diplomatically, the Obama administration has laid the groundwork for a much more robust international response to Iranian intransigence than would have ever been possible during the Bush years.