McCain On Afghanistan

by hilzoy

Yesterday, Josh Marshall wrote:

"Obama has been saying for almost a year that more troops are needed in Afghanistan. McCain has said that wasn't the case, that Iraq was the central battleground in the war on terror. Moreover, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says that we need more troops in Afghanistan but we none are available unless we pull substantial numbers out of Iraq -- which McCain is ruling out.

So let's all say it out loud: McCain is now copying Obama's position on Afghanistan.

And with troops that he doesn't have since he's against pulling any out of Iraq."

He's right. A bit of documentation:

December 2006:

"Asked if the U.S. would send more troops to Afghanistan, McCain responded, "The British have said that they will be sending additional troops, taking troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.

"If it's necessary, we will, and I'm sure we would be agreeable, but the focus here is more on training the Afghan National Army and the police, as opposed to the increased U.S. troop presence.""

July 6, 2008:

"Barack Obama and John McCain are proposing sharply different strategies to seize the initiative from a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, positions that underscore the two leading presidential candidates' competing visions of how to wage the war on terrorism. (...)

If elected, Obama says, he would immediately withdraw thousands of ground troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan to help undermanned US forces defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. (...)

However, McCain, a former fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, says Iraq, not Afghanistan, is the "central front" in the war on terrorism. He believes that NATO and Pakistan must do more in Afghanistan until the United States can draw down its commitment in Iraq - a position which tracks Bush administration strategy.

McCain's advisers say that if he becomes president he would build on President Bush's decision to rely on NATO forces - which now have about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan - and would prod Pakistan to take on Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters camped inside its borders."

December 2007 (in Foreign Affairs):

"Our recommitment to Afghanistan must include increasing NATO forces, suspending the debilitating restrictions on when and how those forces can fight, expanding the training and equipping of the Afghan National Army through a long-term partnership with NATO to make it more professional and multiethnic, and deploying significantly more foreign police trainers. It must also address the current political deficiencies in judicial reform, reconstruction, governance, and anticorruption efforts."

February 2008:

"John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for November's US presidential race, is to launch a diplomatic offensive to push France and Germany to do more to help British forces in Afghanistan.

Mr McCain has told The Sunday Telegraph that he plans to bang European heads together. "I'll go over there and sit down with them," he said, to discuss what he sees as "Nato's failure to do the heavy lifting in Afghanistan"."

July 9, 2008:

"While John McCain has vociferously supported the surge strategy in Iraq, he has been less vocal about the ongoing war in Afghanistan. He called on NATO and other allies of the U.S. to send more troops today, but stopped short of advocating additional American soldiers be deployed to the region until he spoke with commanders on the ground.

“I would like to have our allies make a bigger commitment, both in personnel and other ways,” he said. “I’d like to hear from our military leaders, our chairman of the joint chiefs, as well as the military commanders there.” (...)

McCain’s rival, Barack Obama, has made sending additional troops to Afghanistan one of the cornerstones of his foreign policy."

"Just one week ago":

"McCain said just one week ago that the way to solve the situation in Afghanistan was to look at "a broad variety of areas" -- none of which were an increased troop presence, but instead included some things that were absent from his speech today, including "the effectiveness of the Karzai government, ungovernable areas, ungoverned, uncontrolled areas of the Afghan-Pakistan border.""

Until yesterday, McCain has only advocated sending NATO troops. This may be because as long as we stay in Iraq, we have no additional troops to send. (Though McCain also thinks that "Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq." Oddly enough, there's also this: "The most "critical" difference between the two candidates, McCain said, is Obama's belief that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are disconnected." All very confusing.)

Democrats have been saying for years that we need more troops in Afghanistan, and that one of the huge costs of invading Iraq was that it diverted attention and resources from Afghanistan. Offhand, the first time I can think of that Obama said this was in his speech opposing the invasion:

"You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings."

Or this, from 2007:

"Moreover, until we change our approach in Iraq, it will be increasingly difficult to refocus our efforts on the challenges in the wider region - on the conflict in the Middle East, where Hamas and Hezbollah feel emboldened and Israel's prospects for a secure peace seem uncertain; on Iran, which has been strengthened by the war in Iraq; and on Afghanistan, where more American forces are needed to battle al Qaeda, track down Osama bin Laden, and stop that country from backsliding toward instability."

Or this, from 2006:

"Drawing down our troops in Iraq will allow us to redeploy additional troops to Northern Iraq and elsewhere in the region as an over-the-horizon force. This force could help prevent the conflict in Iraq from becoming a wider war, consolidate gains in Northern Iraq, reassure allies in the Gulf, allow our troops to strike directly at al Qaeda wherever it may exist, and demonstrate to international terrorist organizations that they have not driven us from the region.

Perhaps most importantly, some of these troops could be redeployed to Afghanistan, where our lack of focus and commitment of resources has led to an increasing deterioration of the security situation there. The President's decision to go to war in Iraq has had disastrous consequences for Afghanistan -- we have seen a fierce Taliban offensive, a spike in terrorist attacks, and a narcotrafficking problem spiral out of control. Instead of consolidating the gains made by the Karzai government, we are backsliding towards chaos. By redeploying from Iraq to Afghanistan, we will answer NATO's call for more troops and provide a much-needed boost to this critical fight against terrorism."

Just so it's clear who took what position before yesterday.

Comments

[ken]

I never really bought into the claim that Afganistan was more important than Iraq. Just look at the relative size of the countries populations, economies, natural resources etc. If given a choice of turning one or the other into a pro-western modern democracy the choice would have to be for Iraq over Afganistan.

I have always felt that those who want to withdraw from Iraq in order to fight in Afganistan were just looking for a cheap and nearly meaningless conselation prize for giving up the more important chance to establish democracy in Iraq.

If it is not worth winning in Iraq it is absolutely not worth losing a single soldier or spending a single dollar over someplace as small and meaningless as Afganistan.

We need to deal with the situation as it is today, not as someone like Obama may wish it were. Obama cannot turn back the clock and undo the invasion and conquest of Iraq just because he never supported it. What happened, happened. The Bush administration decided to fight in Iraq. If that was a mistake then giving up the battle now would be an even bigger mistake, especially if the reason is to fight in Afganistan instead.

We either stay in Iraq or we get out of the middle east all together.

[Catsy]

Ken, your comment is filled with so many false dichotomies and begged questions that I'm not even sure it's worth the effort to respond to substantively. You seem to think the whole matter comes down to a formulaic weighing of which country is the biggest economic prize once it's somehow, magically, turned into a pro-western democracy without even bothering to stop and ask if it's /possible/ to do so.

Completely absent from this ridiculously simplistic analysis is any sign that you understand what factors in Iraq make this unlikely, and which of those factors are absent or lessened in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration decided to fight in Iraq. If that was a mistake then giving up the battle now would be an even bigger mistake

I invite you to lay out the train of logic that makes this so. Because frankly, at this point the dubious link between your if and your then--to say nothing of your notion of winning in Iraq--is on the Underpants Gnomes level.

[russell]

ken -

There are lots of things in your statement to contest, but I'll just address one.

If we are in either Afghanistan or Iraq for the purpose of converting either to a Western-style democracy, and absent any other reason, then we are guilty of a crime against the peace.

You can't invade other countries for the purpose of trading their political structure for one more to your liking. It's against the law.

Of course, we're the big dog, so who's gonna stop us, right?

Could be. But things like this have a tendency to come back and bite you on the *ss.

We're in Afghanistan because we were attacked by an organization hosted and sponsored by their government, and whom their government refused to surrender.

God knows why we're in Iraq. The most plausible reason I've heard so far is that we're there because George Bush really, really wanted to invade, and nobody had the stones to tell him no.

You tell me which reason makes more sense.

I'll leave the other points for other folks to make.

Thanks -

[LFC]

Russell said... We're in Afghanistan because we were attacked by an organization hosted and sponsored by their government, and whom their government refused to surrender.

Additionally, that organization and the ousted government that supports them are making a resurgence. It is important to prevent them from establishing dominance in Afghanistan as it provides them a safe haven and access to large amounts of cash earned through the growing of opium poppies. That cash can then be used to attack the U.S.

[A.D. Shire]

After 7 years and a waste of precious human and material resources, we are back to square one and have to fight properly the war that we were supposed to fight in the first place. For my part, McCain, editors of The "War" Street Journal as well as the rest of the neocon "Get-Iraq-Now Gang" can flip-flop and change their mind anytime as far as they get serious and get down to the business on finishing the job in Afghanistan.

Osama Bin Forgotten and the bastards who attacked us that horrible day were not supposed to have the right to repeatedly make home videos that essentially convey the message 'Get Me If You Can!".

History should be harsh to Bush and Yo! Blair for not fighting the real war on terror. Barack Obama is right: this Iraq thing has been a strategic blunder.

Cheers!
An Angry Brit

[yave begnet]

We're in Afghanistan because we were attacked by an organization hosted and sponsored by their government, and whom their government refused to surrender.

That's why we went into Afghanistan ... almost 7 years ago. I don't agree with the decision to invade, but regardless of whether we were justified, why the hell are we still there?

I find widespread progressive sign on for the continued debacle in Afghanistan deeply worrying. Just one more reason to vote Green.

[Sad Truth]

Gramps is just adjusting an opinion he doesn't remember having.

[jvill]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait..

Are you telling me that in a public forum John McCain successfully identified -- by name -- the two countries in which our nation has been fighting wars for seven years?

Holy shit, I gotta go lie down.

[frank]

ken - Afganistan is is bigger than Iraq and has a larger population. And your skull must be really small

[tao9]

Obama's position on Aghganistan is as rock solid as his position on the surge, campaign finance, gun control, pastors, et.al..

Has McCain proposed invading Pakistan with ACORN special forces yet?

[elle]

Let's remember, before Iraq, how our country did not, and would not ever, endorse a pre-emptive war to overthrow another government.

Why have we forgotten that this is the most un-American thing we could possibly ever do-- and why does even one person continue to support such an imperialistic approach to foreign policy usually reserved for dictators and extremists.

[Hartmut]

tao9, Show me a politician whose positions are completely immovable on principle and I'll show you a moronic ideologue. There is a difference between spineless pandering and adadption to the situation.
As for the Son of Cain...What time is it? His positions (if he can remember them) change faster than any clock can follow.

[Kevin Hayden]

I'm not sure when it happened but based on the drone attacks in Pakistan, this change in Afghanistan and today's announcement of the start of diplomatic relations with Iran,it's clear that Bush has put Obama in charge of US foreign policy.

[Steve]

jvill,

You must be forgetting the bonus population factor (see footnote #1) of 100 barrels of oil = 1 person when determining total population. This clearly puts Iraq ahead of Afghanistan in population. In fact it makes Iraq one of the most populous and important countries in the world today.

1 Taken from "The Unabridged Conservative Manifesto Vol 2"

[rawdawgbuffalo]

That is classic McCain you know. The taliban will likely be in kabul b4 december

[eh wot]

Submitted to reddit: http://www.reddit.com/info/6s9cr/comments/

[W Action]

"False dichotomies?" "Begged questions?" Sounds like elitist arugula-eater talk to me. Catsy, what can those phrases possibly mean to a guy who argues that the reason we should be in Iraq is because we are in Iraq? Ken's just repeating McBush's position, which is very loyal of him. Let's join the rest of America in nodding politely and turning away. Just 110 days to go.

[nbg]

Can you say "turn on a dime"? Only after Obama had left them sitting staring at their navels did McCain's senior foreign policy advisors, Randy Scheunemann and Kori Schake pick their collective heads up from Iraq and look up to see Kabul burning. They never would have changed their original position on Afghanistan if it wasn't for it appearing that Obama was the candidate who actually was listening to the senior military officers. The Generals have been saying for several months that Iraq was looking more and more stable while Afghanistan was going wobbly.
Obama has now taken a commanding lead on foreign policy and national security issues because he's made a common sense assessment of the situation and exercised good judgment. McCain, Scheuenemann and Schake are forced to play catch-up and are reduced to saying essentially "me too but even more than him". I just hope McCain doesn't have a "Jerry Ford" moment in the debates. For someone who was supposed to have the hammer on foreign policy this campaign has become a joke for McCain. McCain may be as bad a candidate as Dole in '96.

[Jo]

This is a niggling little point but that reference in the 7/6/08 Boston Globe piece (by Globe staff writer Bryan Bender) referring to "McCain, [as] a former fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war..." is inaccurate. From what I've read on McCain's war biography, he was not a "fighter pilot" -- he wasn't good enough. (In fact, based on his standing in his Annapolis gradutaing class -- 894 in class of 899 -- McCain wouldn't have been flying at all if it weren't for his Admiral dad and grand dad.) Instead, he was a bomber pilot, low rung on the pretige totem pole for carrier pilots. Top rung belonged to the fighter pilots.

[Jack Burns]

stop