McCain warns against 'historic' error in Afghanistan

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain said any added military deployment in Afghanistan smaller than the 40,000 troops reportedly requested by the top U.S. commander there "would be an error of historic proportions."

Asked whether he thought the war in Afghanistan could be won with fewer troops than Gen. Stanley McChrystal has reportedly requested, McCain said, "I do not."

The Arizona Republican, who was defeated by President Obama in the 2008 presidential election, spoke in a wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

"I think the great danger now is a half-measure, sort of a -- you know, try to please all ends of the political spectrum," McCain told CNN chief national correspondent John King. "And, again, I have great sympathy for the president, making the toughest decisions that presidents have to make, but I think he needs to use deliberate speed."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/11/mccain.afghanistan/index.html

[Happyhippychick]

1. Sorry Mr. "Not President" McCain - you lost, get over it and STFU.

[saltpoint]

2. Of our hundred Senators there are quite a damn few of them

from whom Obama should seek counsel before McCain.

[Bette Noir]

22. 99?

[Shipwack]

30. Maybe 98...

I'd want McCain to be consulted before Leiberman... Or Bachman, for that matter, so make that 97.

[Bandit]

42. Bachman is a Senator now?

Must have been quite the election...:shrug:

[Thickasabrick]

3. Everyone should read Frank Rich's column today regarding McCain

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11rich.html

[grytpype]

12. +1

[grytpype]

13. Wrong-Way McCain

Maybe we should put Sarah Palin in charge of Afghanistan policy.

[Thickasabrick]

18. LOL...that's the equivalent of listening to McCain..the guy really loves

his wars.

[No Elephants]

48. Shut up! The only thing worse than that would be putting her in line to be CIC. Oh, wait.

:evilgrin:

[Bette Noir]

24. Thanks for the link.

Great article.

[Doctor_J]

43. Wrong-way McCain

Has gotten every single thing wrong about the Middle East since 2001.

[Overseas]

44. Thanks for the link. Wish most TV reporters would not pretend they do not know that.

It is really annoying to me to see the famous news-chat pundits interviewing Republicans who were so very wrong before, not challenging them on their past mistakes. Just pretending they still have credibility based on their shallow images-- McCain was a soldier; he was "a maverick" --rather than including their dismal failures in the conversation.

I wish some of them would challenge these GOP icons-- "You say our president should increase our troops in Afghanistan, but you were one of the loudest urging our country to turn away from Afghanistan and invade Iraq and that has been a disaster. Why should anyone believe you now?"

There have been so many instances in which GOP blowhards have pontificated on our major TV news chat shows without being challenged on their past mistakes.

Yes I know our major broadcast media have been successfully consolidated into right wing hands. That reality is really depressing these days when we really need the GOP's failed ideas to be challenged in a forthright manner. We need to make many serious changes in our foreign policy and our president was recognized by the Nobel prize committee because he has begun that process. But then we still have the "Go Go Invade Iraq!" team brought onto the media to give their views on military strategies even though their views bankrupted our country and created far more America-haters than their recommended actions killed. The GOP is the Party of War Criminals who practiced torture in our name. They don't deserve to be questioned with the polite respect given to them by our conservative-dominated media.

So frustrating. Every reporter should be doing what Frank Rich has done in his article. Part of each of their interviews with those fierce advocates of failed policies should be a review of their previous disastrous advice.

[goclark]

46. Interesting article nt

[C_U_L8R]

4. McCain is a fool.

Anybody with the unabashed nincompoopheadedness to select Sarah Palin as a
running mate really shouldn't be speaking out on any serious subject matter.

[L. Coyote]

5. But, remember, he knows how to catch Osama. I'm sure he is working in it right now

Could happen any minute now

[Mz Pip]

9. I wish John King

or any one of the pundits John McCain spends so much face time on TV with would ask him that question.

"Senator McCain, during the campaign you stated you knew how to get bin Laden. Have you shared that information with President Obama and if not why?"

[NoQuarter]

25. But doesn't withholding that information

amount to treason? Shouldn't we be pulling McCain's fingernails out or something?

[Are_grits_groceries]

6. McCain obviously is ignoring the biggest history lesson.

You can't effing win in Afghanistan. It has been tried by many people, many times, with different levels of support.

It has never worked.

Did he miss that fact at Annapolis?

EPIC FAIL

[EFerrari]

7. Who knows more about error than Crash McCain? n/t

[Stumbler]

10. Exactly!

Why our media treats McCain as though he won in Nov. is irritating to begin with, but why doesn't anyone ever ask the man what "winning in Afghanistan" means? Then offer a simple follow-up question asking how and why every other major empire to invade Afghanistan has been met with "historic, empire-ending failure."

[MadMaddie]

32. Also, we are talking about invaders over hundreds of years

have not won, not just recently. The Russians destroyed their military trying to win.....the US should pay attention.

[No Elephants]

49. Doesn't matter what he missed at Annapolis. He was a double legacy.

Even with that--and with getting captured--he couldn't make admiral. Tha's why he ran for the Senate.

Hey, if you can't make it anywhere else, marry money or run for office, or both.

[IndianaGreen]

8. The only 'historic error' in here was the invasion of Iraq

Where was McCain then?

Who are those people standing next to Bush in the Rose Garden after voting for the Iraq War Resolution? Why haven't they owned up to the catastrophe they helped bring about?

[Braulio]

14. Iraq, Afghanistan, American Imperialism

The Iraq war was a huge mistake. Afghanistan is also a mistake. As a matter of fact, the US ALWAYS makes a mistake when it uses military power. It hasn't won a war with a good outcome in a long time. Even its involvement in WW One was a mistake, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in WW Two. Other than that, the US military is over-used, too powerful, and ought to be sent back to the barracks. They are a threat to US democracy.

[IndianaGreen]

15. Our Founding Fathers were leery of permanent standing armies

and our first President warned us against foreign entanglements.

We should heed their counsel.

[Captain Hilts]

17. "Rasie" an army, "maintain" a navy. That's why it's the 'British' army and 'royal' navy.

You can't take over a country with a navy.

[No Elephants]

52. And Eisenhower warned us about the "military-industrial complex." We don't seem to listen.

Guess we never quite got over the heyday of the British Empire.

[No Elephants]

50. To be fair, there were many historic errors. (None of which involved withdrawal, though.)

[dmosh42]

11. He said the same about Iraq! Obviously full of shit! n/t

[Captain Hilts]

16. Thanks for the warning, now, go away. nt

[No Elephants]

51. We already said that last November. Guess McNuts and the media forgot.

[tocqueville]

19. McCain is basically saying what McChrystal is saying

and Obama appointed McChrystal

then right or wrong is another story

[melnjones]

27. OMG a voice of reason. nt

[No Elephants]

55. None of which means McCain is correct or that the media should treat him like

either CIC or a military expert.

As far as right and wrong, as you well know, Obama gets plenty of criticism on this board. The OP, however, was about McCain.

[AngryOldDem]

20. No, sir, the only error of historic proportions is this:

Failing to learn from history itself.

Afghanistan will be just another catastrophic hellhole like Vietnam. Sir, you should know better.

[Crunchy Frog]

21. You lost the election old man. You don't get to make US policy.

[Ian David]

23. McCain still hasn't told his his secret plan to catch Bin Laden. n/t

[Arrowhead2k1]

26. The historic error has long been done when Bush lost focus on Afghanistan and went to Iraq.

At this point, it'll take a miracle to get Afghanistan where we want it.

[TeaBagsAreForCups]

28. Two Words For John McCain On "Historic Error" ...

... Sarah. Palin.

[digidigido]

29. The Historic Error was invading it in the first place

[DebbieCDC]

31. Take your tired ass "advice" that no one listens to and go back to Arizona

Maybe the beer heiress will listen to your bullshit.

[No Elephants]

53. And people wonder why she got so addicted to drugs.

[COLGATE4]

33. Who the fuck cares?

Who the fuck (aside from Faux News) what McLame thinks about anything anymore?

[JaneQPublic]

34. If McCain were president, he wouldn't be putting 40K troops in Afghanistan...

...because he would've boosted troop levels in Iraq, since he was such a big fan of the surge there, and would've launched a war with Iran, as promised.

There simply wouldn'be be 40,000 troops to spare, and Afghanistan would still be the forgotten, back-burner war it was during Chimpy's presidency.

McCain is just a crochety sore loser who is telling that kid Obama to get off his lawn.

[IndianaGreen]

35. McCain would have nuked Iran by now

Hopefully McCain will be defeated when he runs for reelection, unfortunately he will be replaced by someone crazier than him.

[tabasco]

39. Right you are.

Much more profitable to sit on top of the oil.

[depakid]

36. And Frank Rich calls McCain out for being a moron and getting it wrong every single time....

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.

He takes no responsibility for any of this.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11rich.html

[47of74]

37. Historic error? Blacked pot meeting a kettle comes to mind here.

[eringer]

38. Mr. McCain, Are You Speaking for Yourself of the People of Arizona?

What a worthless POS.

[classysassy]

40. History

what history books have you been reading sen.military genius?.Ask russia,every nation that has invaded Afghanistan,has left defeated with their tails between their legs.Remember Gen.McArthur warned America about engaging in a land was in the far east.

[Babyserendip]

41. It is time the US back the BREAKING UP OF PAKISTAN...litterally before its too late.

There is only one way to thread the needle here........and it is to help Afghanistan and Pashtunistan unite...as they have been wanting since 1947.

All other policies of any other sort.....any.......will result in blowback to the US, failure on the ground of any good intentions....and the ever grinding demise of Pakistan.

30% of the Pakistan army is Afghan...make them a deal to be the new Afghan army....can you say instant Afghan security.....our boys come home.

The US needs to back the ANP party to make a deal with the Taliban and Kabul.........and find the Sahabzada Yaqub Khan of this moment (the Pakistan Lt. General who let Bangladesh go free in direct opposition to the Punjabi generals who wanted him to butcher Bangladeshis).

Any other American policy is guaranteed failure as we are going against the national aspirations of the natives.

The tragedy of America as it relates to Afghanistan is we are an empire....refusing to act like one.....it is time to stop with the naivete.

In so doing the prescribed...we will turn a cauldron of public hatred into a wealth of public admiration. We will lose the Punjabi Army and the ISI.............not something I except most Americans will be crying over.

[goodboy]

45. It's cute how he thinks he matters:) (nt)

[mvd]

47. The "historic errors" were going into Iraq and ignoring Afghanistan for so long

A withdrawal or a withdrawal with a more targeted approach (whichever conditions warrant) would only be fixing the errors his party's pRresident made.

[No Elephants]

54. Who knew crashing planes and getting captured gets you cred with the media as a military expert?

[nsmith]

56. John "Bomb Iran" McCain is now a dove?

I think he's just pretending to be one, given that Obama is the President and he thinks he must oppose whatever Obama may do. If Bush were on power McCain would support a surge.

[timtom]

57. All of which explains

quite succinctly WHY I DIDN'T VOTE FOR McCain.