Democrats chose the politics of fraud in race against McCain

David Paul Kuhn:

John McCain is scheduled to deliver a major foreign policy speech Wednesday in Los Angeles, one with a heavy Iraq focus, but chances are Democrats won’t be listening. They’ve already distilled his views into an easy to remember formulation: 100 years of war.

It is a reference to an offhand remark made by McCain in January about the possible duration of the U.S. presence in Iraq, a comment that Democrats now portray as the equivalent of the McCain Doctrine.

Though it’s not exactly an accurate representation of McCain’s views, Democratic strategists view the “100 years” remark as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain's national security credentials against him by framing the Vietnam War hero as a warmonger who envisions an American presence in Iraq without end.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama began citing McCain’s remark in Democratic debates not long after he made it and their campaigns have stepped up the focus in recent weeks.

On a recent conference call with reporters, Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s bulldog operative, mentioned four times in two minutes that John McCain “wants to be in Iraq for 100 years.”

“Instead of offering an exit strategy for Iraq, he’s offering us a 100 year occupation,” said Obama last week, in a speech marking the 5-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

McCain never actually went so far as to call for a century-long occupation. Rather, in response to a New Hampshire town hall questioner who asked about President Bush’s statement that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 50 years, McCain interrupted and said, “Make it 100.”

“We've been in South Korea . . . we’ve been in Japan for 60 years,” he continued. “We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day."

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If Democrats were not so dishonest there would be no need to clarify these remarks. When it comes to warfare the Democrats have been deeply dishonest for many years and this is just one of the latest examples. They are also profoundly ignorant of warfare. When Nancy Pelosi talks about "war without end" she has to either be ignorant of counterinsurgency warfare or just dishonest. The average counterinsurgency war takes about 11 years and the insurgents almost always lose. We are not half way there and the Democrats who were expecting 10,000 US casualties in the liberation of Iraq are whining about how long it has taken and 4000 casualties.

While McCain has said he is going to fight a respectful and honorable campaign, this attack on the 100 years war is the opposite of that. but what should you expect from Democrats on an issue they have been wrong about for 40 years.