Thursday, May 15, 2008
Straight Pony Express
I was so leaning towared Obama, but this platform is hard to beat. Behold, John McCain's plan for victory, whisky, sexy:
"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," McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.
"The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced," McCain said.
The Republican senator said that although the United States would still have a troop presence in Iraq, those soldiers would not need a "direct combat role" because Iraqi forces would be capable of providing order.
The usual liberal doom and gloom purveyors have, as expected, been whining about how McCain's platform amounts to nothing more than a fantastical wish-list, not an actual plan. Ponies, etc.
"Fools," I say. You have fallen ever-so-haplessly into McCain's trap. McCain has already explained, in painstaking detail, how he will achieve these modest outcomes. For example, he laid out his comprehensive strategy at a closed door fundraiser in 2006:
"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'" said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.
What do you have to say about his plan now Mr. Wonkypants? Come to think of it, 2013 is a conservative deadline.
Not that he needs anything other than the Bullshit Doctrine, obviously, but I've put in a request to the McCain camp for comment on whether their candidate would also be employing the Glenn Reynolds Field Manual (to be taught at West Point next semester):
It's a war. The way to win it is, well, to win it.
Or, as Reynolds elaborated in a Reason Magazine interview some months later:
3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?
Win.
Heh. Indeed. Obama is so toast.
