Richard Spencer

July 22, 2008

Let’s play a little game called “Name That Presidential Candidate.” Of the two major-party nominees, who said the following? 

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence… A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five ‘surge’ brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

Was it that appeasing cut-‘n-run coward Barack Obama? 

No, it?s the “let’s stay a 100 years” nutjob John McCain, who wrote the above paragraph in his now famous op-ed that the Times editorial board found unfit to print.

I bring this up to point out that amidst all the hullabaloo over the Times?s rejection of the piece and “liberal media bias,? no one seems to be noticing that a bipartisan consensus on Iraq is emerging. Both parties essentially want to get out of Iraq and redeploy troops to Afghanistan?that is, withdraw without sounding retreat and without actually decreasing troop levels in the region. Democrats have their timetables, Republicans have their “time horizons,” the differences are rather minor. 

My earlier blogs on this phenomenon can be found here and here. 

Both parties, as well as the Obamanic media, find it convenient to distinguish the candidates by rehearsing the old “should we have gone in?” “did you support the surge?” debates of the past years. Both the rabid hawks, who actually do want to stay 100 years, and the antiwar doves, who want out now, will be disappointed by what’s actually being planned.