The Passion of President McCain

If the election had gone the other way, Americans would have been spared all this doubt and deliberation about what to do in the Middle East.

Asked today whether adding 10 or 20,000 troops for Afghanistan would suffice, John McCain tells CNN it would be "an error of historic proportions" not to meet Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000 or more.

If Barack Obama were as sure of anything as McCain is of everything, there would be no need for agonizing over what conservative Peggy Noonan calls "a choice between two hells":

"The hell of withdrawal is what kind of drama would fill the vacuum, who would re-emerge, who would be empowered, what Pakistan would look like with a newly redrawn reality in the neighborhood, what tremors would shake the ground there as the U.S. troops march out...a great nation that had made a commitment in retreat...

"The hell of staying is equally clear, and vivid: more loss of American and allied troops, more damage to men and resources, an American national debate that would be a continuing wound and possibly a debilitating one, an overstretched military given no relief and in fact stretched thinner, a huge and continuing financial cost in a time when our economy is low," with no guarantee or even definition of success.

A resolute President McCain would have little patience for this kind of hemming and hawing even though, as Frank Rich points out, "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 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."

But the Might-Have-Been Republican President is content to keep shooting from the hip even as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, another Republican, joins Hillary Clinton in emphasizing a more considered approach:

"(T)he new commander has done an assessment and found a situation in Afghanistan that is more serious than we anticipated when the decisions were made in March. So that's one thing to take into account.

"The other is, clearly, a flawed election in Afghanistan that has complicated the picture for us...

"The president is being asked to make a very significant decision. And the notion of being willing to pause, reassess basic assumptions, reassess the analysis, and then make those decisions seems to me, given the importance of these decisions...among the most important he will make in his entire presidency--seems entirely appropriate."

With McCain in the White House, Gates would be in deep trouble for waffling like that.

Show Biz Strategy for Victory in Iraq

"We can't kill our way out," Gen. David Petraeus has said of Iraq, but now there is an effort to entertain them as we exit

The Defense Department, according to the Washington Post, will pay private U.S. contractors up to $300 million over the next three years "to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to 'engage and inspire' the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government."

The Pentagon was moved by the media operations of al Qaeda, which include slick Web sites with high-tech videos and audio tapes starring Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.

"We're being out-communicated by a guy in a cave," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has complained.

The media offensive, which will include TV talent-search shows and talk radio programs, "may or may not be non-attributable to coalition forces. If they thought we were doing it, it would not be as effective," an American official says.

So part of the strategy of emerging from Iraq with victory and honor, as John McCain might put it, is flummoxing the locals anonymously with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of "American Idol" and Rush Limbaugh to help them appreciate the fruits of freedom and democracy.

Sounds like a plan.

Secretary of State Sweepstakes

As Sunday talk shows are flooded with possible VPs for both tickets, political junkies start the next round of speculation--about the best Secretary of State to help the US repair its relations with the rest of the world.

In the Christian Science Monitor, its former editor John Hughes, who served as an Assistant Secretary under Reagan, gets the ball rolling with a rundown of possible choices for an Obama or McCain Administration.

After owning up to a prejudice for his former boss, George Shultz, now 87, Hughes gets more realistic by touting Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense as "an advocate of a strong military supplemented by vigorous 'soft power,' or public diplomacy, and economic aid. Remarkable for a secretary of Defense, he has argued that the State Department is under-budgeted and understaffed."

Runners-up are Dick Lugar and, raising some doubts about Hughes' judgment, Condoleeza Rice.

For Obama, if they don't get the VP nod, Joe Biden and Sam Nunn head a list that includes foreign policy advisors Susan Rice, Dennis Ross and Tony Lake, all with high-level State Department experience.

But perhaps the most intriguing possibility is former Rep. Lee Hamilton, 77, who earned bipartisan respect as co-chair of both the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, one of the most universally admired politicians of his generation.

Once Dick Cheney vacates the VP office, the Secretary of State may very well revert to being the most influential member of an Administration facing challenges in every part of the world. Voters won't get to make that choice, but it's worth keeping in mind when they pick someone who does.

Rolling Out War Against Iran

It worked before the 2002 elections, so why not now? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the lame ducks that roar, are ready. So is John McCain. Hillary Clinton, now as then, is terrified of appearing soft, and even the anti-Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has joined the chorus.

"What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq," he says, as a second aircraft carrier steams into the Persian Gulf and, according to CBS News, the Pentagon orders military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton is warlike: "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel). In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Joe Lieberman, McCain's alter ego, is envisaging "an attempt to hit some of the components of the nuclear program" primarily from the air, with some covert ground assistance. There is now "active discussion" of such plans, he says.

John McCain, now that Lieberman has straightened him out about Sunnis, Shiites and al Qaeda, is ready to roll in the fall campaign against that softie, Barack Obama, who still thinks he can talk down Ahmadinejad from the nuclear brink.

Haven't we seen this movie before?

The Downfall of Admiral Fallon

Gen. David Petraeus' boss, the top US Commander for the Middle East, has done what Colin Powell should have done over five years ago, and it has cost him his job.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates disclosed today that Adm. William Fallon, after a 41-year Navy career, has asked for permission to retire and that it's been granted.

An article in the current issue of Esquire describes Fallon as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy, a lone voice against military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program who has expressed his opinion publicly.

He told Al Jazeera last fall: "This constant drumbeat of conflict...is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."

That's not what the Bush Administration wants to hear. They much prefer Gen. Petraeus' tamer assertion, "You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq."

So on the eve of Vice-President Cheney's Mideast visit, presumably to sweet-talk our Saudi allies into producing more oil to lower prices, Fallon's discordant voice on Iran will be stilled.

"I think this is a cumulative kind of thing," Gates said in explaining Fallon's sudden decision to retire. "It isn't the result of any one article or any one issue."

That may even be true as far as it goes, but Fallon's departure looks more like an honorable man's way out of being politicized by Washington warriors who still think war with Iran is a dandy idea.

The Blunder Bus Rolls On

The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld top command had plenty of company in mismanaging the war in Iraq, a Pentagon study shows.

Hundreds of U.S. Marines were killed or injured by roadside bombs when Marine Corps bureaucrats refused urgent requests in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles.

The study disclosed today by the AP accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

Stateside paper shufflers sidetracked orders for the heavily armored MRAPs that could have prevented casualties from the IEDs that were decimating US troops on the basis of their cost of almost $1 million each to expedite plans for lighter vehicles still on the drawing board.

Without the knowledge of the Marine Corps Commandant, a field General's requests were sent to a civilian logistics official in suburban Washington. "As a result," the study contends, "there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive."

It was only when current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the trucks the top priority last year that the vehicles started to be shipped in large quantities.

More than 800 Marines have been killed and almost 8400 wounded in Iraq, most of them by explosive devices. The former Marine officer who wrote the report had to file for whistle-blower protection last year with the US Office of Special Counsel after being threatened with disciplinary action for meeting with Congressional staff members.

The Corps seems to have moved more swiftly to protect bureaucrats and their bosses than troops in the field.

Pulling Petraeus Out of Iraq

In an odd juxtaposition, questions about bringing our troops home and how long Gen. David Petraeus himself will stay have become entwined in the Washington debate over Iraq.

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he supports a pause in troop reduction after the drawdown to pre-Surge levels in July, reflecting doubts Petraeus has expressed while others in the Pentagon have been worrying about the strain of prolonged tours on the US military.

Two weeks ago, Gates tried to quiet rumors that Petraeus would be leaving Iraq for the top NATO command, saying "the president is pretty clear that he wants General Petraeus to stay right where he is at least through late fall and maybe the end of the year.”

As the symbol of "success" in Iraq for both the Bush Administration and John McCain's candidacy, Petraeus is finding his own career path blocked by the lowering of violence levels without enough significant political reconciliation to keep making troop reductions.

"Nothing in Iraq is easy," Petraeus told a reporter recently, a statement that may be the gist of his scheduled progress report to Congress next month. Meanwhile, his personal bind is a perfect metaphor for our national dilemma, being stuck in an Iraq stalemate that is like flypaper to any hope of moving on.

Someday, Gen. Petraeus may be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a personal victory that won't console American families whose loved ones will keep dying in Iraq between now and then.

Buying Lives: Army Ups the Ante

In the past three weeks, more than 6,000 U. S. Army captains have accepted payments of $25,000 to $35,000 to serve three more years.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates approved the incentives last month as a temporary measure to retain “a generation of junior and mid-level officers and NCOs who have been tested in battle like none other in decades."

The money is paltry compared to the billions involved in fighting the war in Iraq, but it sheds light on the human costs of our continuing presence there.

"In the Army there has never been anything like this in memory," said Col. Paul Aswell, director of officer policy for Army personnel. "The bonuses are...a measure of payback to the family. They get this windfall to ease some of the pain of service in this environment."

The Washington Post reports a Brigadier General’s comment: "For a young family, these captains have known nothing but war and nonstop deployments. No amount of money can compensate me for missing...my daughter's first play.”

No taxpayer will begrudge this “windfall” for those who pay the real price for prolonging a pointless war, but anyone with financial qualms might want to compare an Army captain’s salary of up to $60,000 a year with the $445,000 it takes to keep a Blackwater guard there.

Honorable service is much cheaper to buy than the efforts of those who besmirch the nation’s reputation by killing innocent civilians.