I Know How To Win Wars

Taking credit for successes and blaming others for failures is what Republicans do. Over the past couple of days I've been listening to GOP Senators on MSNBC blaming NATO for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I suppose "Support The Troops" only means our troops. Fuck the other allies' troops. They can't do anything right, right?

And now McThuselah claims that he "knows how to win wars." Yes, "wars" as in plural. I'm sure he wasn't just thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan as Beach Boys tunes danced in his head.

"...It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the surge -- which Senator Obama opposed -- that we will win in Afghanistan. With the right strategy and the right forces, we can succeed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know how to win wars. And if I'm elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."

Perhaps McCain's definition of winning a war is getting shot down over enemy territory and being a prisoner of war for over five years. We win.

That the "success in Iraq" is the model McThuselah would use in Afghanistan if he became president is absolutely ludicrous. I would not so kindly ask, "What success would you be talking about?!"

It seems that everyone touting success in Iraq is selectively remembering only the post-surge reduction in violence and not the fact that the whole reason for the surge in the first place was to give the Iraqi government time to get its shit together. That hasn't happened and moving the goalposts from "when they stand up, we'll stand down" to "an acceptable level of violence" won't make the surge a success.

And even if you accept McCain's premise that the model of Iraq is the way we'd do things in Afghanistan, one would have to realize that it's an impossibility to do it the Iraq way with the lack of resources we now face. We don't have the troops to send to Afghanistan unless we pull them out of Iraq!

And this is the man that is lauded by the McCainstream Media as a foreign policy wiz!



Unbelieveable!