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Sure the GOP is the party of the Iraq war. To repudiate it is to repudiate the presidency of George W. Bush and the glory days of neoconservative and right wing christian social conservative ascendancy and power. Glenn is right that no serious Republican candidate is about to repudiate the war.
Senator John McCain is a Republican. His entire political life has been spent working in that party. I believe he is a man of integrity and honour but also a man who tries to work within the limits of the American political system, and so a man who must often compromise his real personal beliefs to get things done politically.
The Iraq war is a shared responsibility of the President, the Congress, the media and the American people. After 911 there was a stampede to strike at any and all those who attacked America, and naturally so. Soon the Bush administration launched a war on terror and conflated the threat from Al Qaeda with the threat of WMDs in Iraq. Voices were raised in protest both in the U.S. and abroad, but no one wanted to listen to them. The president intimidated both the media and Congress with the threat of seeming unpatriotic and being unwilling to defend the country against its enemies.
In the visceral emotionalism of those times, and given the legislative realities of the composition of the Congress, and the tendency of the people to rally around and trust their government in a time of crisis, even most Democrats were supportive of the march to war. And so was John McCain.
Iraq is a fiasco, a disaster, a catastrophe, but the question is where does America go from here. What is the best policy to advance the vital interests of the United States in the region from here on out? I do not really know the answer to that but I can readily understand the unease among many at the thought of a precipitous American withdrawl and seeming defeat.
This administration sought to project American power into the region bringing a degree of modernisation and democracy to the middle east- admittedly, it sought a democracy in harmony with American power and objectives in the region. Instead the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush team has brought America another Vietnam. How long do you think it will be before the helicopters lift off from the green zone in Baghdad with Al Maliki clinging to the runners?
John McCain is a victim of that, as are we all.
