Letters to the Editor
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Minding Your P's & E's
Note the semantic evasion of Howard Kurtz: "... to say he doesn't have experience in this area is simply not true."
What is "experience in this area"?
a. Being shot and captured in a war?
In which case, McCain has no more experience than the tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were injuried in the past century of military conflicts.
b. Talking about wars?
Makes him a little more experienced that the local tavern drunk with an opinion.
c. Visiting foreign places?
Puts him on a par with anyone who can frivol away a few thousand dollars on an international airline ticket.
What Kurtz hopes to conflate is military experience or foreign experience with foreign policy insight. Arguing a particular policy in the Senate (or on Meet The Press) isn't "experience", it's just the ability to expound (mistakenly) on military strategy or tactics.
So, it is true that he has as much policy experience as any candidate for President, or townhall drunk, but he has no history of exceptional knowledge or keen analysis that would distinguish him from any of the others.
His sole claim to fame is that "He was a major proponent of the surge," which, in his mind, was a complete and transcendental success. But, "add more troops" is not a policy, nor even a strategy. It's a momentary tactic, at best. Whether it succeeded or failed is - in spite of representations by the remaining military servants of the administration - still a matter in factual dispute.
That McCain has no grasp of the facts of the matter is now fairly evident. He's always been wrong on the policy because he's always been wrong on the facts: WMD, AQ in Iraq, nuclear weapons in Iran, etc., etc.
McCain has one foreign policy position: "kill the bad guys", whoever they are, wherever they are, until there are no more boogeymen left anywhere in the world. Just gird your loins, because it's going to be a million years of death and destruction.