Douthat-comma-Ross (that's the nick I use - I have one for everyone) writes:
McCain, by contrast, spoke the language of honor, duty and obligation, and cast the question of whether to leave Iraq in starkly moral terms: "To walk away from the Iraqi people ... on a fundamental level McCain's calculus is the right one
The question for John McCain, at this election, is why didn't he think about this BEFORE he voted for the Iraqi conflict?
For all his touted experience, why on earth would one enter into a potentially debilitating situation (a.k.a. a quagmire), without many of your natural allies at your side and without the key financial support enjoyed during Gulf-I, when honor itself restrains you from leaving?
Clearly, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld feel no such "honor" themselves, telling the nation that it would be better to fight al-qa'ida over there than over here. For pity's sake, where is the "honor" in that, in a formulation so horribly crass? The list of the rest of their statements along these lines are legion, for those listening for them.
Tell McCain to go to the Saudis, the Syrians, the Turks, the Israelis, the Iranians, the Japanese, the Chinese, and many others and get them to pay in full for the next five years.
Otherwise, the notion that the U.S. hasn't made maximal honorable effort already is daft, with $900+ billion already committed even under an Obama administration and another six hundred lives plus ten times that in wounded likely even for a two-year continuation ...
