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Invasion becomes re-invasion
By Ned | July 19, 2008
My ex-boss, unsurprisingly, has what I think is the smartest take on this whole “Maliki endorses Obama’s plan” thing. But since this is less a blog for that sort of policy analysis and more a blog for looking at the crazy shit people will say to the American public with a straight face, I want to focus on the McCain campaign’s response. Matthew Yglesias passes it along without seeming to realize how batshit insane it actually is:
“His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out,” said a senior McCain campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The military says ‘conditions based’ and Maliki said ‘conditions based’ yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders.”
So McCain seems to be saying that if the US military’s top brass supports a continuing troop presence in Iraq, then a President McCain would support that even if the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people both want us out.
Now think about that for a second. Because a military occupation of a country that doesn’t want it, is by definition an invasion - and this would effectively, therefore, be an invasion of Iraq and the government we installed there after originally invading it. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as ridiculously alarming?
The good news is that, as Matt puts it, “it’s just a no brainer that if the Iraqi government doesn’t want us to stay we have to leave. McCain even said so himself before conceding the point became damaging to his campaign.” So I don’t think a McCain presidency would actually do this - he’s just trying to spin this thing as hard as he can, even if he ends up with a position that’s just flat-out lunacy.
Topics: Elections, Iraq, The Media |
July 19th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
[…] Invasion becomes re-invasion […]