WASHINGTON - White House hopeful John McCain tangled with reporters on Thursday over whether he offered a “timetable” when he delivered a speech in Ohio predicting victory in Iraq and the return home of most U.S. troops by 2013.
The presumptive Republican nominee pushed back in particular at one journalist’s suggestion that the speech took listeners on a “magic carpet ride” into the future.
In the Columbus, Ohio speech, McCain used a literary device of sorts to describe what he hoped to accomplish in his first four years in office, not only Iraq but on other issues.
“What I want to do today is take a little time to describe what I would hope to have achieved at the end of my first term as president,” the Arizona senator said.
Iraq was the first subject McCain discussed.
“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq war has been won,” he said.
McCain later said the economy at the end of his first four years in office would be “robust” and Americans will see improvement on issues like health care and education.
Reporters traveling with McCain on his campaign bus pressed him on whether the discussion of troops coming home from Iraq in 2013 amounted to a timetable. McCain has criticized his Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have each said they would begin an Iraq pullout shortly after taking office if elected.
McCain has said such timetables were a recipe for defeat and that troop changes should be governed by conditions on the ground. But he was adamant his speech did not offer a timetable.
“It’s not a timetable. It’s victory, which I have always predicted,” McCain said.
After several rounds of questioning on that issue, one reporter said McCain was essentially asking listeners to his speech to “go on this magic carpet ride to 2013″ — a description the senator rejected.
“First of all I don’t view it, if you’ll excuse me, as a ‘quote’ magic carpet ride,” he said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy. I think it has to do with setting goals and achieving them.”
But that didn’t stop critics from pouncing on the speech, including one analyst, Les Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations who said the predictions were from “la la land.”
Gelb said McCain’s expectation of democracy and stability in Iraq by 2013 was “wild-eyed” and “unsupported.”
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
Photo: Reuters/Richard Clement - Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain speaks to employees in front of a wind turbine model at the Vestas Wind Technology plant in Portland, Oregon on May 12.
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7 comments so far
Welcome to Fantasy Island! This guy is clearly delusional. Hard to believe so many people still buy into this Republican dream world.
- Posted by steveYeah Let’s not forget that this man could not distinguish between Sunni and Shiete Muslims just a few weeks ago (inexcusable for any paid representative of the American people in my opinion). While I respect Sen. McCain’s service to this country, his foreign policy outlook is very similar to W. These guys are delusional “Wilsonian idealists” (this meaning they think they are fighting a war on terrorism to end all wars on terrorism) who are trying to shake down as many countries as they can by labeling them “suspected” terrorist states / friends of the Terrorists” Just like the War on Drugs, terrorism will not be stopped by dumping endless resources to chase bands of thugs around the globe, the war on terror will be won when radical Islamists fail to meet their recruiting quotas! It is not a military battle, (despite our significant investments of life and limb in these protracted efforts)but rather an ideological battle that must be won through strategic diplomatic maneuvering rather than overt military intervention. Lets not forget that although 9/11/01 was by every definition “a day that will live in infamy”(FDR), it does not excuse belligerent use of force by the U.S. particularly in efforts that compromise our diplomatic leverage with graver global threats such as Iran and Russia. Let’s get back to some sober pragmatism in Washington this November.
- Posted by OzSo, will McCain also be appearing on an aircraft carrier under a banner saying “Mission Accomplished”?
- Posted by SixSenile dementia?
- Posted by jangelI was at the speech in Columbus and “literary device” is a severe understatement. His fantastic description went on for nearly 20 minutes of his 30 minute speech, creating an illusion in the audience that these things have already happened. Most people were confused into thinking the world is perfect and republican values are to credit. VERY TRICKY.
Don’t forget that he also solved global hunger and poverty, drove down inflation, and ended racial genocide worldwide, all while promising weekly press conferences and Q&A sessions before Congress. What a hero!!
Vote for change. Yes we can.
- Posted by JDogg[...] we have the new, improved, "McCain unit"– which is apparently that the next four years will be crucial in Iraq. Indeed, McCain [...]
- Posted by The Sensible Center » Blog Archive » Juan Cole on the "McCain Unit"Dear Mr. & Mrs. Reader…
Shades of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon…and George Bush!
Here we go again with John McCain!
For some time now I’ve been expounding on very obvious parallels between the length, breadth & depth of major U.S. involvement in SE Asia and SW Asia…and the fatal mistake of getting bogged down in direct military involvement which invariably leads to the perpetual quagmire of conducting counterinsurgency operations as an occupying power on foreign soil.
1. SE Asia - Primarily Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos (from 1945 to 1973 for 28 years).
2. SW Asia - Primarily Iraq (from 1979 to Present for 29 years thus far) & Afghanistan (from 2001 to Present for 7 years so far).
One would think that we would have learned from our mistakes, and from the mistakes of others who have also gotten bogged down in attempting to counter (put down) insurgencies far from home, e.g., the French who preceded us in SE Asia (Indochina) for 9 years until 1954, and the Russians who preceded us in SW Asia (Afghanistan) for 11 years until 1989. There are others that I could cite, but these are the most obvious.
Whatever lessons we learned, however, have been ignored since the “get go”, i.e., since 2001.
Mr. Bush’s SW Asia political and military foreign policies confirm the just cited parallels.
Mr. McCain has just confirmed these parallels yet once again…by putting a number to them that even he knows is not real, i.e., “2013″. He ought to know better, seeing as he supposedly exercises common sense, whereas Mr. Bush either does not (or cannot) exercise the same.
For some altogether unknown reason, Mr. McCain apparently thinks that the U.S. could have prevailed militarily and politically in SE Asia, particularly in Vietnam…if U.S. military forces had just stayed there a few more years…until now perhaps, i.e., some 45 years after President Kennedy beefed up the Special Forces advisors there?
The problem with this wrong thinking is simply this. Insurgencies can always be sustained longer than counterinsurgencies, militarily and politically…especially the former.
After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, the U.S. was indirectly involved with SE Asia (primarily what is today Vietnam) until 1963. Later, the U.S. was directly involved for another 10 years in conducting an unsuccessful counterinsurgency (i.e., individual military battles were won, but the burning candle of insurgency stayed lit). The latter 10 of 28 years were the hot years of U.S. involvement, whereby there was a long and bloody deployment and withdrawal of U.S. military forces.
President Truman’s indifference to Ho Chi Minh and the latter’s aspirations to eject French colonialists started the ball rolling after World War II.
President Eisenhower and congress spent $billions supporting the last few gasps of French colonialism until 1954, and $billions more supporting a South Vietnamese “democracy” until 1961. President Kennedy (1961-63) and then President Johnson (plus an easily persuaded congress) continued the ball rolling with the deployment of advisors, and then with a major deployment of regular forces after the so called Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964.
After the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, the U.S. became indirectly involved with Iraq (and with our then ally, Saddam Hussein) until 1990 (said involvment beginning with President Carter, and continuing under presidents Reagan and G.H.W. Bush). In 1991, U.S. military forces were deployed into SW Asia (i.e., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait & finally southern Iraq) over the issue of oil.
The bottom line insofar as “2013″ is this. If Mr. McCain is elected to the presidency, the next thing he will be saying is, “Let’s just give it until 2017.”
In the meantime, the privileged few in the U.S. will just keep on profiting from war…and from oil (which is pushing an astounding $130 a barrel!).
U.S. debt will continue to skyrocket with our military deployments in SW Asia costing an astounding $100 billion per year.
Likewise, succeeding generations of young Americans will continue to sacrifice their lives or limbs, sight, hearing and physical & mental health on the counterinsurgency battlefields of SW Asia…against a perpetual insurgency. You know the math so far.
If there is a solution to all of this, it is one that must be implemented by those who are indigenous to SW Asia, not by those who are indigenous to North America.
The overriding issue for future peace in SW Asia is one which nobody really wants to address in a realistic way because it is political dynamite for American politicians in all “three houses” of government, i.e., the House of Representatives, the Senate & the White House.
This issue is “Palestine”.
Said unresolved issue will remain unresolved until the “last man standing”. Israel will never stop expanding its borders until each and every Arab within Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights is absorbed into the Jewish state, or until each Arab leaves and is absorbed into surrounding Muslim states. The descendants of Palestinian refugees from 1948 will never be allowed to return to “Palestine”.
Said unresolved issue of “Palestine” is not one that will ever be solved by the U.S. being bogged down figting a perpetual counterinsurgency in Iraq or in Afghanistan.
Our resources are not infinite. Our young soldiers, marines, airmen & sailors cannot simply be looked upon as a “renewable resource” to be expended indiscriminately by politicians for the sake of bad foreign policy.
Our Best & Finest are too precious to their families…to all of us…to be looked upon that way.
Let’s find Osama bin Laden and get it over with, shall we?
Best Regards,
- Posted by Oklahoma JackOklahoma Jack