Confusion: Is It That McCain Is Too Old?

Waking up this morning, with Morning Joe on the TV, as I prepared my oatmeal, I heard nothing but conjecture about Obama’s campaign, and the angle they are taking with McCain. A few days ago, on the Today Show, to Matt Lauer, McCain said,

“not too important” when American forces could come home from Iraq and that, “What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea;
Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.”

To McCain’s credit, he is analyzing Iraq with a naïve sense of pragmatism, which would be fine were it somewhere in Africa or Asia, but history has shown the contrary; hence, my use of “naïve.”

Due to McCain’s age, I don’t suspect many in the press will use the adjective “naïve” in referring to his comments on Iraq, not in analysis. Rather, we have Obama’s campaign surrogates or John Kerry using the word “confused.” Quite simply, that word is somewhat fitting, in the same way one calls someone’s child “confused,” when they are espousing naïve claims.

All of this is perfectly understandable. Right now, for Obama’s campaign to use the word “naïve” would open the door to Obama’s relatively short tenure in national politics. Rather than using “naïve” or “confused,” in my humble opinion, they should switch to “strategically flawed,” for the same line of attack. By all means, they are working to do that, but McCain’s comments are so absurd, it’s hard not to speak to quick pejoratives, as that is what comments like this deserver.

I look most forward to a live debate on the subject. I would love to hear Obama utter the words, “Senator McCain, you are wrong. Let’s step back and game this. Right now, we have 100,000+ troops in this country, one we invaded on a cause, which was later demonstrated to be false. There is a region that has theological and culture division from us, whose activists and terrorists are using the above premise, the invasion, to justify terrorism and anti-Americanism. In the meantime, we have not caught or killed Bin Laden. What strategic benefits to maintaining an occupation in Iraq do we have?”

The quick and dirty of it is that while McCain’s age is something to avoid outwardly discussing, his ideas and beliefs in foreign policy are antiquated. McCain is still thinking in terms of “us versus them,” which would be fine; however, “them” is something much more amorphous than it was when it was the USSR. In short, we are fighting a culture, one which uses our “fight” as justification for further violence. While I am not saying we stop being violent towards those trying to kill us, I am suggesting, we work differently than treating our current enemies as Nation-States. This isn’t the Cold War, nor do we have a draft.