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McCain's Defense Of Iraq War Reveals Insight And Blind Spots

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 25, 2008

Sen. John McCain is being unfairly ridiculed for wanting to fight the Iraq war for 100 more years. Fighting beyond 2100 is a frightening prospect and it's based on something he did say. But the accusation is an audacious exaggeration.

What the presumptive Republican nominee for president actually said was that troops might stay in Iraq for 50 or 100 years under peaceful conditions as exist in South Korea and Germany.

If the insurgency ends within a few years, as McCain hopes, and Iraq is able to defend itself, it may well be in the interests of Iraq, America and the broader region for Baghdad to host a stabilizing contingent of U.S. troops indefinitely.

McCain is right that a hasty retreat would abandon U.S. supporters to bloody reprisals and open the door for extremists and terrorists to set up camp. He's right that some version of victory is worth more expense and sacrifice. He's wrong to leave the impression that victory is worth any price.

Sen. Barack Obama, likely Democratic presidential nominee, takes a simpler line, promising to bring the troops home fast. McCain wants the fighting troops out only after they've established peace, yet McCain correctly concedes that the public will not support an endless war.

McCain is taking a firm stand on ambiguous ground. We aren't sure how long he would want U.S. troops to remain if the violence doesn't end, how he would get war expenses under control or whether he would invade other countries under similar circumstances.

McCain is chairman of the International Republican Institute, whose mission is to advance "freedom and democracy worldwide." He describes himself as a "realistic idealist," a label that suggests he wouldn't fight for freedom where the costs were too high or odds of success too long.

But clearly McCain is willing to employ U.S. power to remodel selected parts of the world. On Iraq, he seems more idealist than realist. That is, he believes it is this country's moral duty to impose democratic values on Iraq and to change the minds of Iraqis, no matter how violently they disagree.

But by adding the "realist" qualifier, McCain also keeps one foot in the camp of more cautious folks who want to avoid warfare except where vital U.S. interests are at stake. On the continuing killings in Darfur, for example, McCain is a realist. He recognizes it would be a mistake to send U.S. troops into that vast, remote area of Africa to try to impose peace.

The isolationists, another foreign-policy faction, are angry at both McCain and President Bush. This camp thinks the country should mind its own business. Its members see raw democracy as no improvement if property rights and civil liberties are ignored.

These voters don't trust big government, either at home or abroad, and regard a war of choice as an excuse to expand the government's power and budget.

The other end of the political spectrum is also seething. Many liberals see the war as a cover for private profiteering and unchecked military spending, not as an expansion of freedom. They prefer spending less on war and more on domestic programs.

McCain makes a strong case for sticking with Iraq until its fragile government no longer needs life support, but he has been uncharacteristically quiet on the question of costs.

President Bush has paid for the war through a series of emergency appropriations, all supported by McCain, that have been kept off budget and beyond normal accountability reviews.

"It's impossible to tell in 2008 how much the U.S. is spending on defense and where the money is going," writes Veronique de Regy of George Mason University in Reason magazine.

"This scheme has allowed them not only to hide the costs of the conflicts but also to avoid painful budget choices while funneling billions of dollars in unvetted goodies to favored interest groups."

The Congressional Budget Office says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost about $1 trillion, astronomically more than Bush originally estimated. A supplemental budget request signed by Bush last June included tens of millions of dollars for shrimpers, California citrus, salmon fisheries and asbestos mitigation, as well as money the Pentagon may or may not really need.

Both the idealist and the realist in McCain should balk at such tactics for financing the war and defending the nation.

There is no chance the Iraq war will last a century. But the unrestrained spending is building up debts that might not be repaid for 100 years.

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