July 24, 2008 
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My Top 3 |
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More “Surge” distortions from McCain. While he was in the midst of lying about the timeline of the so-called “Anbar Awakening” and the Surge (McCain claimed the Surge led to the Anbar Awakening, even though the Awakening began long before the Surge), he claimed that:
Colonel MacFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening.
And then:
The Arizona Republican’s campaign went further the next day, claiming that the major figures that turned around Anbar province would have been killed had the surge policy not been in place. “If Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda,”
Only, the most notable of those figures, the Awakening’s founder Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, was assassinated in September 2007, at the height of the Surge. So much for the “protection” of the Surge, and how Obama’s policy would have resulted in their murder.
Oh, and while we are looking retrospectively at “what ifs” concerning who made the right decisions in the past, why stop at the Surge? Why don’t we go back to a far more important choice, like invading the country in the first place looking for nonexistent WMDs? Hmmm…help me remember…who opposed this devastating war in the first place…? I’m pretty sure that was…Obama! Yes, it turns out if he had followed Obama’s judgment in the past we wouldn’t have to worry about the “Surge” because it would have never been necessary. Also, there would be over 4,000 more Americans alive today. There would be tens of thousands of less wounded Americans today. There would be thousands fewer suicides, there would be less broken families. There would be hundreds of thousands or possibly over a million more Iraqis alive today. There would be around 4.5 million less refugees in the world today. Afghanistan wouldn’t be the mess it is today. Osama bin Laden probably wouldn’t be free like he is today, and al-Qaeda probably wouldn’t be just as strong, or stronger, than it was before 9/11. Oil prices wouldn’t be at record levels. Our deficit wouldn’t have exploded to historic levels. We probably wouldn’t be facing a huge recession right now. The world wouldn’t hate us (nearly as much).
I could go on and on and on. The point is, does John McCain really want to play the “what if” game? Does he really want to have a debate over who ultimately has better judgment?? Because I’d love to have that debate, and I’m sure Obama would too. Why is it that the media pretends that the past doesn’t matter, that only the future matters, how long we will stay in Iraq? Why is it that the ONLY time they look back is to see who was “right” or “wrong” on the Surge, when a MUCH more important question is who was right and who was wrong at the beginning, when the decision was cast to invade and occupy Iraq? The single biggest decision of the last 8 years, the single best way to draw distinctions between the judgment of the two candidates, and we pretend it is ancient history that has no relation to the current election, or our current situation in Iraq.
I’m very much against single-issue voting, but if there ever was one, this would be a great candidate. How about single-issue voting on foreign policy? Do we really need to have a debate over foreign policy when McCain and Bush were so obviously dead wrong on launching this war in the first place, while Obama was absolutely right? That settles the foreign policy debate as far as I’m concerned. Why waste so much time on it, when the last 5+ years have done nothing but proven Obama right and McCain wrong?
But really, isn’t it interesting the the media NEVER discusses the logic of the initial invasion? That they NEVER question what that says about McCain’s judgment? All of this chatter about what every little statement or event means about Obama’s judgment or whatever, yet on the single most important question McCain flunked and no mention of it? Seriously, how can this possibly not be an issue in this campaign? Why does the media pretend the history of our involvement in Iraq started with the Surge? I’ll give you a hint:
♥ Media ♥ McCain ♥
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