John McCain's main claim to foreign policy accomplishment is that "the surge" worked in Iraq. Really? If this is success, I'd hate to see what failure looks like.
It's OK with John McCain that people are still losing their lives, limbs, and minds every day in Iraq. Has he forgotten that this was a war that didn't need to be fought in the first place? Has he forgotten that 4,000 + have lost their lives so far and many more than that have lost limbs and many more than that have lost years spent away from their families? Has he forgotten that "Mission Accomplished" has already been prematurely declared once in this misadventure? Has he forgotten that we're still spending a couple billion dollars a week that we don't have in Iraq (on what, I'd really like to know)?
You can't really talk to the 30 percenters about that kind of thing, though, because their frame of reference is so different. They see Iraq as a battle in the Ultimate War Between Good and Evil. Never mind that, bad as he may have been, Saddam Hussein was a secular leader despised by Bin Laden and the Jihad Boyz. Never mind that the real bad guys were and are headquartered in the empire-slaying terrain of the Hindu Kush, not the Fertile Crescent. Never mind all that. The Iraqis are playing ball, selling us their oil like good little vassals, and it's only costing us one GI life per day plus a lot of "inconvenience" for the others and their families -- and a couple of billion dollars every week. That's what the 30 percenters see as success, which tells you a lot about why they have no problem handing over the reins to another incompetent, corrupt administration.
But have they considered what the surge has cost in terms of our ability to fight the real War on Terrorism? Put another way, have John McCain and the Republicans forgotten that we're starting to lose badly in Afghanistan? The commanders there are begging for more troops as casualties mount for the U.S. and our allies. As a matter of fact, August was the deadliest month since the Afghan campaign began. Yay, surge.
Look, it could be a coincidence that as troops surged into Iraq, all hell broke loose in Afghanistan, but things really don't work that way. The so-called "surge" made resources unavailable for Afghanistan. Don't get me wrong: I was never for the war in Afghanistan. I took the unpopular position that the Taliban could have been negotiated with and Bin Laden made their sacrificial lamb. The fact is that we're there now, though, along with a legitimate coalition that is now experiencing major losses. The "surge" in Iraq prevented the U.S. from committing the kind of resources we needed in Afghanistan. As a result, the Taliban are inching closer to controlling Kabul every day. Yay, surge.
The view from 30,000 feet isn't all that good. We're losing one war to stanch the bleeding in another, but worse than that, our military power writ large has been degraded badly. The Russians are finding their groove again, and the Chinese probably aren't quaking in their boots anymore. Iran is probably safe to see its nuclear program through to completion. North Korea is laughing its head off at our expense. Yay, surge.