Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing
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Meet The Press is hard enough to watch with Tim Russert asking pointless questions, but yesterday’s show was brutally painful, mostly due to the appearance of John “Baghdad Walkabout” McCain.
From the transcript:
SEN. McCAIN: …I hope that we will have the patience and the understanding on the part of the American people that they’ve made great sacrifice and all of us are saddened by it. But I hope we can also point out the consequences of failure, which is what the Democrats are proposing now.
SEN. KERRY: Listen to that. You just said the Democrats are proposing failure. We’ve had…
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah. (Unintelligible)…failure.
SEN. KERRY: …four and a half years of failure. The Republicans stood up and cheered for Rumsfeld, who had a policy of not enough troops. To his credit, John at least said he needs more troops. But the fact is they’ve supported every step of this president, misleading America about the course of this war. Last January the president stood up to Americans. You know what he said, Tim? He said, “We will hold them accountable to their benchmarks.” They’re not holding them accountable. They have no means of holding them accountable because they’ve said we’re going to stay there with 130,000 troops into next summer. They have no leverage.
We are not proposing failure, as John loves to assert and Republicans loves to assert. We are proposing a way to strengthen America in the region. We’re proposing a way to, in fact, make Iraq successful to the degree that it can be by playing to the real undercurrents of their, of their cultural and historical divisions. Nothing in the surge addresses the question of Shia, Sunni divide. Nothing in the surge is going to resolve the fundamental reluctance of Iraqi politicians to make a decision, Tim.
Now, we’re not talking about abandoning the place. Why do the Republicans have a complete inability to envision a foreign policy, as we used to have, Republican and Democrat alike, which plays to our strengths and builds alliances with other countries? Bring the United Nations back in. Bring the neighbors into this. Have a standing summit in a standing conference where we resolve these differences as best as can be. The United States can’t do it alone. And we have to change the equation so we regain leverage and initiative. That’s not walking away, that’s walking forward and putting us in a stronger posture.
No where in the show does McCain offer any hint, solution, idea or Divine Jesus-Speak of a way for us to get out of Iraq. McCain and the GOP are constipated and can’t think of any other idea other than to stay on the pot and hope everything comes out OK.
You know, like Saigon.