McCain: Still clowning around and calling it governing
Wow, such great concern from Sarah Palin's running mate, who
worries that the Bergdahl prisoner exchange will turn the war in Afghanistan into another Iraq:
"I'm sad to tell you I'm afraid they're going to re-enter the fight," said McCain, who warned that, ultimately, their return could become even more dangerous because of Obama's plans to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan.
"You can have a certain price [for a prisoner of war], but it's exacerbated by the president's decision to take everybody out of Afghanistan. And these people will be going back as the Taliban leadership, and this will, of course, in my view, cause another replay of Iraq," he said.
Uh, no, it won't. Because the problem with Iraq wasn't that we were ending the war too quickly, it's that we started it in the first place. Obviously, the war in Afghanistan is a war that John McCain doesn't believe should end, but he lost the debate over that. And the way you end a war like this is by ending it. And when you're ending a war, this type of exchange is perfectly appropriate.
The only way you can argue on behalf of McCain's position is if you invoke Godwin's Law or something like it and say that the prisoners being traded are among history's greatest monsters. Naturally, McCain obliges:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday called the five Guantánamo detainees released in a prisoner swap for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "hard-core military jihadists who are responsible for 9/11" and said he expects them to return to fighting against the U.S.
Given his position, that's a mighty pleasing claim for him to make, but it's not true, and not even McCain pretends there's any evidence that it is. Even if he had, his track record is so abysmal there'd be no reason to trust him. Adding to the absurdity of his argument, McCain does acknowledge that he's not opposed to prisoner exchanges in general, just this one in particular. So what would he have preferred?
“I believe there are other prisoners, some of whom we have already released, that we could have released in exchange,” he said.
Brilliant idea! Except does he really think Bergdahl's captors would have been willing to trade him for prisoners that had already been released? The only question I have is why he doesn't think we should have tried trading a rainbow, or maybe a unicorn, instead.