by
Rich Gardner | 09.27.2008
Obama and McCain go at it. Obama did quite well, McCain said a lot of silly stuff.
Liveblogging of the debate begins with FireDogLake, Daily Kos and Think Progress.
John McCain appears to want to keep all the old wars going AND to begin new ones! He thought the US shoul keep at it in Iraq. He thought that troops should be increased in Afghanistan. He was for defending Georgia against Russia, even though Georgia clearly started the fight (Obama unfortunately agreed with McCain even though he probably knows better). He even appeared to want to have Ukraine join NATO! The US is very heavily overstretched as it is. Exactly where does McCain expect to get the troops to do all this? Obviously, if the US population was willing to put up with a draft in any form, we would have seen that awhile ago.
McCain tried and tried to make the case that the "surge" in Iraq was a success and that the drop in violence owed nothing to factors that the US didn't control, but for anyone familiar with the arguments, that just didn't wash. Especially telling on that score was McCain's description of "clear, hold and build," a strategy that was tried many times, unsuccessfully, long before General Petraeus assumed command of US forces in Iraq.
McCain mentioned the former Bush policy of refusing to meet with bad inernational actors. Gives good summary of the idea, saying we don't wish to reward bad actors by legitimizing them (via publicly meeting them). Barack Obama correctly points out though, that the policy was a complete failure. Bush has begun to change it and even denounced John Bolton, who was very fond of that policy.
McCain's economic proposals sound a lot like Ronald Reagan's, and we all know how that "great deficit hawk" thing worked out! Deficits shot through the roof!
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Comments
You lie to your own self
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 09/27/2008 - 10:46pmThe dang surge did work, Rich. You are just so much of a left wing nut to admit it. You destroy your whole argument by stating such ignorance. Things were going to hell in a handbasket because enough troops were not sent there to do the damn job. The so called surge just increased the forces to a level where they could rout the enemy. That is exactly what happened. Your claims otherwise are so much hogwash, and you know it. One thing for sure, the socialist Obama may hoodwink some of the more gullible, and the old die hard democrats will vote for him, cause he's a democrat, but main street America will not vote for a racist, socialist muslim for president.
It wasn't the only reason
Submitted by Rich Gardner on Sun, 09/28/2008 - 3:43pm"...the surge--meaning the increase in troops and adoption of a viable counterinsurgency strategy--was only one, and perhaps not even the most important, element in the reduction of violence."
http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2008/09/iraqs-political-transition-after...
Yes, the surge did have an effect, no it wasn't effective all by itself. And no, the "enemy" wasn't "routed":
"The insurgency, both Sunni and Shi'a, has now (at least for the moment) become political: the insurgents and supporters of the insurgency want a seat at the table."
The traditional media (And of course the usual Republican propagandists) have great difficulty portraying an issue like this in any serious detail, but Obama demonstrated during the debate that he, unlike McCain, sees the issue in all of its complexity.
McCain seems to view it as an old-time western movie, with guys wearing white hats and black hats.
Like McCain, you fail to explain where all the extra needed manpower is going to come from to fight all of these wars that McCain is so anxious to fight.
Typical for an obvious dittohead who thinks that Obama is a Muslim, as that's Limbaugh's new talking point.
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