The Two Faces of John McCain - Part VI - Does He Have An Iraq Policy?

McCain Strongly Rejected Long-Term Iraq Presence: "Bring Them All Home"

From The Song: "Flip Floppin Again, Boys"

Excerpted from and article by Sam Stein in the Huffington Post - April 28, 2008

When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain was for the idea before he was against it.

Three years before the Arizona Republican argued on the campaign trail that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, he decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.

In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan -- something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign -- the senator offered nothing short of a categorical "no."

"I would hope that we could bring them all home," he said on MSNBC. "I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff."

Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue. "You've heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I've heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German...the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?"

McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. "I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence," he responded. "And I don't pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."

The January 2005 comments, which have not surfaced previously during the presidential campaign, represent a stunning contrast to McCain's current rhetoric.

They also run squarely against his image as having a steadfast, unwavering idea for U.S. policy in Iraq -- and provide further evidence to those, including some prominent GOP foreign policy figures in the "realist" camp, who believe McCain is increasingly adopting policies shared by neoconservatives.

Finally, the comments undercut much of the criticism the senator has launched at his Democratic and even Republican opponents.

On the campaign trail, for example, McCain has accused Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of a "failure of leadership" by advocating a policy of drawing down troops. But in the MSNBC interview, McCain was arguing that U.S. "visibility" was detrimental to the Iraq mission and that Iraqis were responding negatively to America's presence - positions held by both Obama and Clinton.

Somewhere along the way, McCain's position changed. Perhaps twice. As Think Progress reported, in August 2007, as the troops surge was underway, McCain told the Charlie Rose Show that the Korea model was "exactly" the right template for U.S. forces in Iraq. Only three months later, and on the same show, he completely reversed himself.

"Do you think that this - Korea, South Korea is an analogy of where Iraq might be," Rose asked in November 2007.

"I don't think so," replied McCain.

"Even if there are no casualties?" Rose chimed in.

"No," said McCain. "But I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws."

Then, in the lead up to the New Hampshire primary, the senator famously said that he wouldn't mind seeing the U.S. in Iraq for a hundred years, "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." And when his political opponents used that statement against him, McCain responded by saying he was drawing an analogy to the current military presence in Japan, Germany and South Korea.

And yet, when he was asked by Matthews in 2005, if he "would you be happy with [Iraq] being the home of a U.S. garrison" like Germany, McCain again said no.

The McCain campaign did not return a request for comment.

On Tuesday morning, MSNBC aired video of McCain's 2005 remarks:

The McCain campaign and Marc Ambinder note that earlier in the Matthews' interview, the Senator argued that:

"Sure we`re going to come home. But the fact is that the key to it is not when the troops come home. It is when we stop reading -- today, Shuster just reported four brave young Marines were killed. It is the casualties that creates the discontent amongst Americans. We`ve been in Bosnia for, what, 10, 12, years, Kosovo for 10 years, South Korea for 50 years. Americans aren`t upset about that. But we have got to get the casualty rate down. And that`s the transfer of well-trained and well-equipped Iraqis to handle the security situation."

Ambinder argues that, "the full context of the interview he gave in 2005 suggests that he modeled a long-term U.S. commitment to Iraq on South Korea, albeit with a big difference: a major corps would not necessarily have to embed itself in the country."

Two points, however, remain. McCain, in Matthews' follow-up question (and the Rose interview) did specifically reject the South Korea model.   More significantly, there still seems to be an obvious friction between what the Senator said in 2005 and what he is arguing on the campaign trail.  Do American forces stay in Iraq, in some capacity, for "maybe 100 years" after violence dies down, or do they leave the country once the violence cedes?

Ambinder says that under McCain, "Soldiers" would merely be "euphamized as 'military advisers.'"  But McCain did argue in 2005 that "visibility" was a problem to the U.S. mission.

The McCain campaign, at this point in time, has not returned request for comment on the last question.

Army Times: "McCain reveals confusion over Petraeus role"

April 15, 2008

Liberal blogs are all over this...The Army Times writes that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "may not have been paying the closest of attention last week during hearings on the Bush administration's Iraq policy."

The evidence? Before the annual meeting of the Associated Press, McCain was asked if elected if he would divert troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to if that's what it would take to capture of kill Osama bin Laden.

"I would not do that unless Gen. Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that," McCain said.

Watch the Q & A HERE.

The issue, according to the Army Times, is that Gen. David Petraeus, as top commander of troops in Iraq, testified last week that he would not express an opinion on allocating resources on the worldwide stage since he's focused on Iraq.

"Petraeus, however, made clear last week that he has nothing to do with the decision," the Army Times writes. "Testifying last week before four congressional committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee on which McCain is the ranking Republican, Petraeus said the decision about whether troops could be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan was not his responsibility because his portfolio is limited to the multi-national force in Iraq. Decisions about Afghanistan would be made by others, he said. "'I've been sort of focused on another task,' Petraeus said when pressed about whether more troops should be diverted to Afghanistan rather than Iraq."

The McCain campaign argues that this is misconstruing the senator's point, and that of course McCain knows that Petraeus isn't in command of forces in Afghanistan.

The senator knows the difference between the responsibilities of theater commanders and regional commanders in chief, they say; his father, Admiral John McCain Jr., was CINCPAC -- Commander in Chief, Pacific Command. What the senator was saying , his campaign argues, is that he wouldn't remove troops from Iraq to go to Afghanistan unless Gen. Petraeus assured him that he could sustain the counterinsurgency in Iraq without them.

The question the Army Times is referring to was asked during the House Armed Services Committee hearing -- not the Senate hearing -- when Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., asked Petraeus, "do you have an exact time in your mind as to when Iraq became the number-one priority, compared to Afghanistan? Is there a date in your mind that you can relate back to when that occurred?"

"Sir, not in mine," Petraeus said. "I've been pretty head-down inside Iraq for most of that time, and I'm not sure who made that determination, when that was made."

Snyder recalled that Admiral Fallon last month testified that he needed 2,000 more troops in Afghanistan. "You have talked a lot today and yesterday about conditions-based," Snyder said. "Here we had a combatant commander sitting down and testifying he needs 2,000 more troops -- trainers, primarily -- today in Afghanistan. How should the Congress respond to that kind of comment?"

"Well, again," Petraeus said, "you're asking the commander in Iraq, ... I don't know how the Congress responds. I mean, I guess the Congress weighs how much more it can resource. I think you are already funding an expansion of the Army and of the Marine Corps, I believe. Again, I've been sort of focused on another task."

This all gets into the drive to create narratives. In an attempt to undercut McCain's national security expertise and credentials (which is not to say his judgment, a separate issue), any gaffe or confusing statement McCain makes in that area is being attacked. There's the subtextual implication that this may be because he's old.

Fair or not, this is how the game is played -- on both sides. If Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, made such a statement -- the phrasing, not the position -- conservative commentators would be all over him, accusing him of not knowing the difference between a theater commander and a regional commander in chief.

Obama's whole point is that before we invaded Iraq there was no al Qaeda in Iraq. [We should have concentrated on the Taliban in Afghanistan and let Saddam and Iran be at a standoff. my view] Our invasion did not make the world any better: gas costs more, terrorists took advantage of the war and now occupy Iraq, we have troops bogged down in Iraq when a good portion of them should be in Afghanistan. Iraq had nothing to do at all with 9-11.

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