I've got a bracelet too?

Charles Hurt:

Barack Obama made one thing crystal clear in last night's debate: He simply doesn't care if we win or lose the war in Iraq.

"Nobody's talking about defeat in Iraq," Obama said - trying desperately to make John McCain stop talking about the single most important decision of Obama's very short career in the US Senate.

That was whether, during the most hopeless days of the war in Iraq, we should send in added troops to turn the tide of American bloodshed and stamp out the rise of terror in a country we had long before decided to invade.

Choosing certain defeat, Obama said no to the surge.

It wasn't his war. Why should he sacrifice some of his political capital just to avoid an American military defeat? All the blood sacrificed by our soldiers wasn't on his hands.

For Obama, the war going badly had been a great political boon. His early opposition to it had gotten him noticed.

And his unwavering opposition is why he beat Hillary Clinton in the primary.

John McCain, who knows something about military defeat, made a different decision. It was an unpopular one - and it came during the darkest days of his campaign.

Still, McCain lashed himself to the sinking ship that was the war in Iraq and voted for the surge.

He'd rather win a war and lose and election than lose a war, McCain said more times than we can remember.

Today, of course, Iraq is a much different place. It is far more peaceful than even the biggest war proponents dare imagine just a year ago. And Obama, after months of hemming and hawing, finally acknowledged the unavoidable: that the surge succeeded beyond his wildest imagination.

Yet, amazingly, he also says he still wouldn't have supported the surge.

One of last night's most telling moments came when McCain revealed a wristband that had belonged to a soldier killed in Iraq given to him by the soldier's mother. Do everything in your power, the mother told McCain, to make sure "my son's death was not in vain."

"I've got a bracelet, too," Obama said - given to him by the mother of a dead soldier who asked Obama to "make sure that another mother's not going through what I'm going through."

...

Obama wears the bracelet of those who want to lose the war. He sees political gain in that loss because it would make the use of force in the future more difficult. He just want man up and say he wants to lose. McCain is man enough to say he wants to win.