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What McCain is actually saying is far more ridiculous than what he appears to be saying. What is a crazier idea:
A) I don't mind leaving troops in Iraq for a long time, because I think if we fight it out for another ten or twenty years we can accomplish real change.
or
B) Within 2-4 years, Iraq will be a stable, peaceful, democratic state with excellent U.S. relations, and we will have a moderately-sized group of soldiers there which will never be attacked by enemy forces.
I would say that option B) wins by quite a bit, in similar fashion to his ridiculous speech of a few weeks back where in McCain proclaimed that "in the future, President McCain has won the Iraq War and caught Osama bin Laden."
What I'm saying is: yes, the Democrats are hitting him for the wrong thing, in a way, but is it really their responsibility to explain his idiotic and arrogant position to the public if he cannot do that himself? Also, if his strategy is to keep fighting until U.S. troops are no longer in danger there, then ipso facto, his strategy is to keep fighting in Iraq for many years to come. So I don't believe it's unfair to characterize his position that way, much as it's not unfair to characterize the position of a "Shock and Awe" supporter as: "he doesn't care about civilian casualties," even though that person would say, "I just believe in use of massive initial force when invading a country."
