It’s Getting Hot In Here

by digby

So, McCain has Silvestre Reyes and Joe Lieberman backing his “plan” to send in 20,000 more troops and now we hear the president is seriously considering it.

I will merely reprise my earlier post on this from last month:

I do not want to see anybody sent into that meat grinder and I’m not sure they can do it. But if they do, it will stab St. John right in the back. His rationale for winning in 2008 hinges on his calling for more troops and the Bush administration not listening. (Whoever wins the Republican nomination in 08 must run against both Bush and the Democrats.)

McCain made a tactical error when he asked for a specific number recently. If they give him what he wants and it fails, which it will, his rabid support for the war becomes a huge liability:

Mr. McCain contends that the war in Iraq is worth fighting and is worth winning. He has said consistently from the start of the conflict that the only way to prevail is to send enough soldiers to do the job. His current proposal is to send 20,000 additional troops in hopes of bringing Baghdad and the restive western provinces under control.

The alternative, he said, is humiliation for the United States and disaster for Iraq.

He’s going to be left with no option but to call for even more escalation going into ’08 if they do this. I can’t help but wonder about the political implications. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the number is the same and that Abizaid famously said recently that the extra 20,000 weren’t necessary. If the Bush administration now “gives” McCain exactly what he’s asked for they are effectively passing off the war to him. McCain is positioning himself to be Lyndon Johnson in this thing without even becoming president.

Sending in more troops is a crazy idea, but it’s the kind of crazy idea that Bush is looking for. And it is the kind of crazy idea that will make the country turn on John McCain. I seriously doubt he ever thought it anyone would do this — and I doubt he thought through the political ramifications of calling for 20,000.

He be in big trouble if Bush decides to do what he wants. By ’08, this war will be a dead albatross around his neck. But then, McCain has always been too cutesy by half on this — he deserves to be strangled by his own arrogant posturing. Who did he think he was, claiming that he could have “won” this thing if only the country had listened to him. It was always unwinnable and he’s a lying, opportunistic piece of garbage. If Bush sticks the shiv in St. John’s back one last time before he leaves office, it will be poetic justice.

Sadly, however, it requires that 20,000 more Americans troops get stuck in the middle of hell on earth and I cannot hope for it, even as I know that all is lost anyway and all we have left is to put a non-crazy person in the White House in 2008. I still do not believe we will withdraw from Iraq until after January 20, 2009, no matter what Jimmah Baker or or anyone else says.

It’s a very unpalatable set of options these right wing failures have left us, isn’t it? Let’s hope they are taken out of the foreign policy loop for a good long time. If this mess doesn’t finally prove they are incapable in this area, nothing will.

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