Why Is McCain Upset About Winning the War in Iraq?

So did the surge work? How would I know? If a chicken crosses the road on South Padre Island in Texas and Hurricane Dolly hits one hour later, did the chicken cause the hurricane? I assume that all of the major media, the MSM, would assume that the chicken did, for such is their trenchant level of "analysis."

As I followed the war in Iraq, it always seemed to me that there would come a time when Iraqi insurgents would "mature out" of their desire for armed conflict, much as crime rates fall as a population ages. It takes a lot of energy to cause trouble. Let's face it: that's a draggy way to lead your life. Holed up in hovels, hiding ammunition, building bombs, getting blown up by American helicopter attacks or shot down in the street. I suspect that Muqtada al-Sadr reached an accommodation with the Ungrateful Nouri at some point and decided to cool it with his Shia militia brigades. If you look at the casualty count over on the right and scroll down to April, 2008, you'll see that in that month of militia uprising in Basra and elsewhere in Shiite Iraq, American casualties resumed their "pre-surge" levels. I suspect also that General David Petraeus is a crafty tactician and used other means to reduce the incidence of IED violence, such as walling off enclaves at the border of sectarian neighborhoods. And of course that most trusted of American methods: we bought off the Sunni insurgents by putting them on the payroll. Petraeus was hired, after all, because of his record of success up north in Kurd country. He's good at his job. These factors seem more important than 30K/130K = 23% increase of American troop levels, especially if we recall that General Shinseki pegged the correct level of troops to control insurgency in 2003 at somewhere around 300,000, and was fired for his trouble. He was right, and a lot of Americans died because the Bush crew does not like inconvenient disagreement.

Yet Petraeus has obviously done good work. Maybe too good. Now John McCain is fulminating because he thinks Barack Obama is proposing to accept defeat when victory is within our grasp. I doubt that victory is ever going to look more permanent than it does now. As I was saying yesterday, I think the Bushies got punked by al-Maliki. I was amused to read a Maureen Dowd column today in which she continues the MSM trope that Maliki is a marionette. In haec verba: "McCain is hopping mad that the surge that he backed, and Obama resisted, has now set the stage for the Bush puppet Maliki to agree with Obama’s exit strategy." No, Maureen, I don't think Nouri is a "puppet." Haven't you been paying attention? [Dear Readers, you really should write your own blog; the great pleasure is in talking back to these self-appointed know-it-alls, and since their stuff is mainly read on line and for free, you have the same access to the public they do and in the same way.] Why would Maureen Dowd think that a guy with perpetual 11 pm shadow who persists in saying things Bush doesn't want to hear is his "puppet." Doesn't Maureen Dowd even want to try to make sense?

Never mind the "surge" and other phrases devoid of content, like "aspirational goals" within a "time horizon." The simple fact is that the Iraq war played out too fast for John McCain's purposes. He wanted there to be carnage, bloodshed, American casualties, chaos, and political divisions right through the election season. That isn't going to happen, and that's what he's mad about. Maureen Dowd completely misses the point. [Seriously, go to Blogspot and get started. You'll love it.] McCain is now in the same position as the liberals were in the heyday of the insurgency; kinda hoping for another bomb in some Baghdad market area.

Which is the true tragedy of Iraq. It's a cynical exercise in pointlessness, used by political factions for domestic advantage. Bush started the war to assure his reelection in 2004; McCain wanted the war to get worse so he could win in 2008. Bush's defeat comes about because Nouri outflanked him on the oil issue, borrowing our army to solidify his own grip on power long enough to build a police state to take over after we leave, while stalling cleverly on any oil concessions until our departure became inevitable. And now McCain has to run on some other issue. And what the hell would that be? His economic leadership? His gas tax holiday? His sexist jokes? His pledge to pacify the Iraq-Pakistan border?