Letters to the Editor
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Just wait...
I'm sure whatever domestic terror incident Shooter has planned for late Summer will cause the sheeple to swing around to supporting McCain. You'd think that people wouldn't fall for it again, but you just can't underestimate the stupidity of the American populace. And I say that as an American.
Oh yeah.. First!
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Actually, the surge was not the primary reason
for the drop in violence. An additional 30,000 troops is diddlysquat in a country the size of Iraq. It was the new tactics employed by the army to get various tribal chiefs to fight against the various insurgent groups. These groups will regroup after being attacked from the rear and things will pick back up as it were.
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Credit The Democrats
The Democratic majority in Congress woke George up to the fact that his pet strategist, Rumsfeld, had to be replaced.
If you will recall, immediately prior to the Election Bush said "Rumsfeld stays" to the critics of our war strategy.
Immediately after the election of the Democratic majorities in Congress Bush replaced Rumsfeld.
Keep this in mind: This would not have happened had the election sustained the Republican majority.
So, any Republican claiming credit for the military successes in Iraq must first credit the American voter for finally waking up and giving George a long-deserved kick in the butt.
The Democratic candidates would do well to precede every campaign speech with a thank you to the voters that caused this all to happen.
McCain deserves no credit here.
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John 'Bomba Iran' McCain vs. The Surrender Monkeys?
I see McCain's position as the low risk option. The Democrats have yet to prove they won't withdraw from Iraq. The public perception is that a Democratic President will either withdraw, or substantially reduce the troop levels. McCain gets a public boost from outshouting them, as they try to take the middle of the road, and lean into the hawkish camp. The Democrats meanwhile are trying to sound tough, while trying to assuage the dominant Left Wing position, which is against the war. McCain has a decided edge in this debate. The war is off the front page, the MSM dropped coverage months ago.
McCain gets a secondary push from talking about something which sounds like news, and he sounds like he knows what he is talking about. This elevates his persona to that of the omniscent leader (Bush likes to play this role, I know something you don't...) who sees what is really happening on the ground in Iraq.
If it comes down to Iraq, McCain can win this election, and if it comes down to the economy as the substantive issue, McCain can win this election too.
The Democrats are gearing up for an attack on Republican fiscal policy, and McCain is one step ahead of them on that subject, listing the amount of earmarks each Democratic candidate has taken. No surprise that McCain is polling well against either Democratic candidate. If the war gets worse that simply proves that we need a bigger and better surge, if the lid stays on Iraq, that proves the surge worked.
The administration will pull some strings to get the stock market going until the election, just like they did in the 2004 midterms, with the gasoline market. Look for new highs in the DOW, paid for with freshly printed Bernanke dollars, and siphoned into the system by the Presidents Working Group, all done under the auspice of crisis management.
With the economy off life support, and plenty of money to run the war, McCain can talk up Iraq. The big risk is that they can't micromanage the numbers. The self applied censorship by the MSM also applies to news on the economy, where confidence is considered more important than the bottom line, (see Paulsons heated exchange in yesterday's testimony). The MSM will graciously comply, and keep the bad economic news on Main Street from getting into the state run propaganda network.
Under those circumstances McCain is likely to win the election.
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News coverage has fallen off
I think the wise democratic nominee will tie the war to the economy -- surge and its success be damned, the economy is the number 1 concern of voters this year.
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Define Victory
This needs to be the first priority for "Hundred Years War" McCain. If we can define "is", surely we can divine what McCain means by a victory in Iraq, since he is no more likely than Mister Bill to define the word for us.
The fact is the surge and the relative quietude in Iraq (and it is very relative) coincided, but there is no proof one has caused the other, but plenty of evidence that (in a stunning irony) the US military has managed to pull off a small diplomatic coup among tribal leaders. By its very nature this won't last, but it has been the most effective move in the entire war so far, which really doesn't say much for the conduct of said war.
If a convenient outrage takes place here or someplace else where it can directly affect even a few Americans (a terrorist act of some significance, not an increase in fighting in Iraq), then it will become clear just how gullible the American people really are. Fool me once...uh...whatever.
What is troubling is that Senator McCain is not running on his political acumen but his having served in the US military, an honorable and noteworthy thing, but not on the order of, say, Dwight Eisenhower. John McCain is no Dwight Eisenhower, and getting shot down and captured (and surviving both) makes for a remarkable story, but it says nothing about the man's ability to lead the country, except deeper in to a meaningless war which, as he has already told us, would be "fine" with him should it last another hundred years. Flip remarks like that, a McCain trademark, need to be clarified now.
If the war has to become less stable (there is, in my estimation, no "winning" this thing, there is only stabilizing it and/or leaving) then god grant it happen sooner than later, because we have been fooled repeatedly. One hopes we have learned, but I've been fooled enough times already by my fellow Americans and their gullibility and above all else their desperate wish for security.
That desire for security may well be our ultimate downfall.