Loving the War

Means never having to say you were wrong:

Way back at the beginning, McCain was a charter member of the “Iraqi-people-will-greet-us-as-liberators” club. Then he made his first trip to the war zone in August of 2003, and came back very worried about the way things were going. “If we do not meaningfully improve services and security in Iraq over the next few months, it may be too late,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. And after that deadline passed with no plans for sending additional troops, he simply kept grumbling on Sunday morning talk shows and making speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Now McCain sees this conflict as a potential “fight for survival,” and at minimum, the only thing standing between the Middle East and “catastrophic consequences and genocide.” If he realized the war was being run so badly, you would really expect a level of dissent somewhat higher than you hear when the issue is, say, inadequate funding for the No Child Left Behind Act. You would figure that McCain would be delivering a passionate speech every single day. Offering amendments that threaten to withdraw funding unless more troops are added. Staging hunger strikes in front of the Washington Monument.

Instead, he helped George Bush get re-elected. Introducing the president to a crowd of soldiers in Fort Lewis, Wash., in 2004, McCain reminded the audience that we were in a fight between good and evil. He warned them that if the terrorists got hold of weapons of mass destruction we would all be toast. As far as how things were going, he said: “Like all wars, this one has had its ups and downs.”

That's all it comes down to. Big, manly Republicans with little, baby egos. They can't admit they got the big one wrong and spin rationalization after fabrication to avoid living up to reality. It's true, admitting you got something as important as this so colossally wrong would destroy your credibility forever, but it's the right thing to do. Instead, our leaders are either willfully ignorant or too insecure to say they were wrong. Their collective fragile psyche is holding Iraq and our troops hostage. When a Republican opposes withdrawal, it's because he's afraid for himself.