McCain Caught Simplifying Iraq Events
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Barack, Iraq, McCainRattling around the Internets yesterday was this report that, in an interview with CBS, John McCain misstated the timeline for the Iraq surge and the Anbar Awakening. The Awakening began before President Bush announced the troop increases but McCain’s statements made it sound as if the surge directly led to the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq.
Now, McCain is denying that he misstated the timeline, insisting that critics misunderstand the meaning of “surge.” McCain says the surge included numerous counterinsurgency initiatives, some of which began several months before Bush announced the strategic change in January of 2007. McCain continues to maintain that, without the surge/counterinsurgency efforts, the sheiks who revolted in Anbar could not have succeeded because we could not have protected them.
While McCain can validly argue that our increased troop levels and improved counterinsurgency efforts helped insure the success of the Anbar Awakening and similar Iraqi-led revolts against al-Qaida, he knows full-well that the common definition of the surge is the increase in troop levels President Bush initiated in January 2007. The Anbar Awakening was underway well before then.
I think McCain got caught simplifying history for the sake of a clean argument. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the order of events it’s just that the order of events are inconvenient to his argument. Much like the success of the surge is inconvenient to Barack Obama’s arguments. Both men are struggling to present the facts as they stand and not as they wish they stood. We will need some serious media and citizenry vigilance as we go forward in this campaign to make sure both candidates are painting an accurate portrait of Iraq and our successes and failures there.
McCain deserves to get smacked for simplifying events and appearing ignorant of the historical timeline. But his greater point is not wrong. The surge helped insure that the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida succeeded. Will Obama ever admit the same?
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July 24th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Will McCain, the media, or this blog ever admit the surge has not been a success as defined by the original purpose: political progress enabling the withdrawal of our troops?
It’s amazing how naive McCain and his followers are (and the media complicit) on this simple fact: we cannot drop down to presurge levels without reservation, for fear that Iraq will fall back into a quagmire. This is proof of the surge’s ineffectiveness.
But don’t let me get in the way of the sheeple who believe the lazy MSM and need a horserace to sell papers or keep viewers watching.
July 24th, 2008 at 8:46 am
So, you’re saying that even though McCain is wrong, he’s still right?
July 24th, 2008 at 8:56 am
“Before” and “after” are quaint concepts best left for a pre-9/11 worldview.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Ed,
So you’re saying the surge didn’t work but without the surge Iraq would still be an quagmire? The far increased stability of Iraq, which is helping produce political stability, is evidence of the surge’s failure? I don’t get it.
Not that I attribute 100% of the improvement in Iraq to the surge, I just think it’s difficult to argue that it hasn’t had a net positive effect.
George: No. I’m saying McCain was dead wrong for making the statement. Then, as a second point, I’m saying he’s right that the surge has had a positive effect. I don’t know why he felt he had to misstate the historical timeline — that loses him a few points in my book. But Obama will continue to lose points too until he acknowledges the surge has had an overall positive effect — a position he is slowly moving towards — which I’m sure will not please Ed.
Mind you, I thought the surge was a bad idea at first. So I’ve hardly come to this opinion because I was just following blindly along.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:21 am
I love Obama. He’s killing McCain right now. But his skirting the issue of the surge as progress is one issue where I feel like he’s being petty for fear of losing political points, and I want him to acknowledge that it has had an impact. I think he is right in saying we don’t know what would have happened without the surge, but he’s gotta admit that it’s had a positive impact.
What do you think about CBS’s handling of the interview, by replacing the answer of his question with another less damaging answer?
July 24th, 2008 at 10:35 am
I am an Obama supporter and want him to win, but he’s made a mistake here. Surge, per-surge, awakening, timelines, whatever…He was wrong to argue that we needed to pull out, when what we needed was to keep pushing forward to get the “truck out of the ditch” (to use his own metaphore), not back up and pull out precipitously. The events on the ground are showing that the dust is finally settling, the people are sick of it, and they’re “standing up” so we can “stand down”. Luckily, McCain is an ineffective communicator, so Obama’s stumble on this is unlikely to cause him to lose (let’s hope). Even though he was wrong, he’s still coming out looking like the hero. He’s a great politician, we need him to lead us post Iraq, but he’s also one lucky SOB.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I agree, Alan. McCain is not above ignoring inconvenient details to make a stronger argument then he really ought to….but to be fair, I don’t have much trouble believing that in McCain’s mind the change in tactics to employ cpunter-4GW ideas is a part of the surge. Mathematically speaking, we tend to think of the surge as simply +30k troops, but the change in tactics is a part of the story when it comes to the currently improved conditions, such as they are/ Most reasonable folks agree on the trend if not the extent, right?
Both Obama and McCain are currently showing the sorts of gaffes that come up when a candidate is playing politics so hard and for so many marbles that he or she becomes very defensive and unwilling to concede any ground or any point. The wiser approach for both McCain and for Obama would have been to graciously acknowledge the facts as they are. Obama ought to have acknowledged that America should be pleased that things in Iraq are working out better now than they were 6 months ago, while cautioning that the hardest was yet to come and that we are being pushed to the point where keeping our troops in at current levels will become untenable. And McCain would lose nothing by acknowledging that current improvements are due both to the increase in troops and the shift in tactics. He lost an opportunity to show he was well-versed in what’s going on.
BTW, for folks interested in what these tactics are and how 4GW (4th generation warfare) works and how it can conceivably be countered, read Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. I have yet to finish the whole thing, but I’ve already learned a lot. And FWIW, I’m not a McCain supporter _OR_ an avid hawk. I’m an independent who is currently leaning towards Obama. And on foreign policy, I’m more of a cautious realpolitiker reluctant to advocate foreign entanglement than I am a hawk. I’m no dove. I view realpolitik as a more sophisticated way of saying that our foreign policy baseline is “tit for tat.”
July 24th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
The worst problem with McCain’s claims is that not only does he screw up the timeline of the surge but also does not apparently recognize all of the other factors that went into the events in Iraq. First, there was the success not of Iraqi security forces or American troops but of the Sadrists and other fanatics who succeeded in their ethnic cleansing campaigns resulting in a mass emigration of Iraqis out of their country to become refugees in any country that would take them and a very thorough segregation of the ones who couldn’t get out. Think that didn’t contribute to a drop in violence?
How about the problems Sadr ran into with his own people fighting each other for influence and money until he had to order a stand down if he wanted to show that he was still the one in charge? Another contributing factor completely outside any U.S. tactics or increase in troop strength.
It’s just one more example of a simplistic mindset that insists on simple explanations for complex events, especially when someone wants to take credit for the one event that they say made everything just peachy keen.