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John McCain Criticizes John McCain For Wanting To ‘Muddle Through’ In Afghanistan

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for further escalation in Afghanistan, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Liebermen (I-CT) specifically reject a previous contention made by McCain himself. The senators claim that under-resourcing the Afghanistan effort “is a recipe for quagmire and collapse of political support for the war at home”:

Mr. Obama was right when he said last year that “You don’t muddle through the central front on terror . . . You don’t muddle through stamping out the Taliban.”

Asked about Afghanistan back in Nov. 2003, McCain stressed that Iraq was the more important effort, but that he thought that we would be able to “muddle through”:

MCCAIN: I am concerned about it, but I’m not as concerned as I am about Iraq today — obviously, or I’d be talking about Afghanistan — but I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that he is making, that in the long term we may muddle through in Afghanistan.

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None of the three hawkish senators, all of whom shilled relentlessly for the invasion of Iraq, have ever owned up to the now widely-accepted fact that the diversion of troops and resources and attention away from Afghanistan toward Iraq was the critical factor in the resurrection of the Taliban insurgency. Read more at the Wonk Room.