Reject the audacity of hopelessness

LA Times:

John McCain launched a blistering attack today on Barack Obama's foreign policy, contending that the Democrat's opposition to the surge in Iraq would put national security at risk.

McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, has backed the troop escalation that he now credits for improving security in Iraq.

"Sen. Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear," McCain told the GI Forum, a Latino veterans group holding its national convention here. "I told you the truth."

...

"We were on the brink of a disastrous defeat, just a little more than five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, and America faced, my friends, a profound choice," McCain said. "We could accept defeat and leave Iraq and our strategic position in the Middle East in ruins, risking a wider war in the near future. Or could we summon our resolve, deploy additional forces, and change our failed strategy?"

He said the stance on the surge was a "real-time test for an American commander-in-chief."

McCain said he backed the surge even though it was unpopular at the time. "My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups," he said. "The country I loved had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it."

Obama, a senator from Illinois, voted against the surge. "He didn't just advocate defeat," McCain said, "he tried to legislate it."

"Fortunately, Sen. Obama failed, not our military," McCain said. "We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right." (Emphasis added.)

"If Sen. Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically," the Arizona Republican said. "Civil war, genocide and wider conflict would have been very, very likely. Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened."

McCain described an Iraq where there have been no sectarian killings in Baghdad for 13 weeks, the Iraqi Army is gaining strength and the government is meeting many of its political benchmarks

"In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory," he said to applause.

...

It is curious that the Times buried the punch line of the speech. The media and the Obama campaign (pardon the redundancy) may want to ignore just how disastrously wrong Obama was about Iraq last year, but the voters need to know how poor his judgment was. Note how the report starts by calling the statements of fact about the war a "blistering attack." These are facts that suggest Obama would be a bad choice for President and McCain is right to make voters aware of it, because it is clear the media will not do it otherwise.

To its credit the Washington Post story does not bury the lead.