McCain’s Lesson From Iraq: Surge Hard, But Don’t Lie America Into War So Much

<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McCain29aug2005.jpg">The White House</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


“There hasn’t been a very happy ending.”

Regret was the running theme when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) talked about Iraq at an event Tuesday hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. The panel discussion, held on the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, also included Gen. Jack Keane (ret.), who McCain praised as a prime intellectual “architect of the surge” in Iraq in 2007. The two featured speakers bounced back and forth between a range of topics, including the slaughter in Syria and the “spinning centrifuges in Tehran.” McCain gave his backhanded approval to the Obama administration for “finally” committing a billion dollars to the expansion of America’s national missile defense systems—a move by the Pentagon last week meant to counter a (nonexistent) threat from North Korea.

The focus of the event was, of course, the lessons learned in the ten years since the war in Iraq kicked off; it has been over a year since the official end of US involvement in combat operations.

Since the troop surge began in January 2007, McCain has trumpeted his support for the 20,000-strong surge—and its perceived success in stabilizing the country—as a point of political honor. And his message during this ten-year anniversary event was no different: “If I have a scathing critique of the Bush administration, it is this: It took them three years to figure this out,” McCain said, regarding the administration’s delay in boosting the number of American troops in Iraq. (During defense secretary Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings, McCain grilled him for his staunch opposition to the deployment of those additional troops.)

Those who were advocating for the surge “knew what had to be done,” McCain triumphantly asserted. “It was an unpardonable mistake that [the Bush administration] let the war limp along as much as [it] did.”

Though McCain did criticize the Obama administration for not securing a residual force of some 20,000 troops in Iraq, he reserved harsher words for the blunders and deceptions that defined Bush’s war in Iraq: “If there is a lesson to be learned it’s we better make sure that information is correct that leads us to send Americans into harm’s way,” he said, referring to the weapons of mass destruction that weren’t. (Flashback: On an episode of CBS’ Face the Nation in February 2003, McCain said: “[T]here’s not a doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein would give a weapon of mass destruction to a terrorist organization, because they have common cause in trying to destroy the United States of America…I don’t know the connection that exists right now between the two, but I know they have common cause.”)

So John McCain’s main lessons from the Iraq war boil down to (a) surge harder, and (b) lie to the American people less when building a case for a large foreign war.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate