Obama and McCain Debate Iraq and Foreign Policy
Obama's speech today led McCain to scrap his planned comments and turn to Iraq
Presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama today repeated his vow to quickly end the war in Iraq, promised to finish the fight against al Qaeda, and sought to draw a bright line between his opposition to the war and his GOP opponent John McCain's support for it.
"George Bush and John McCain don't have a strategy for success in Iraq—they have a strategy for staying in Iraq," he said during his morning speech at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. The war, he said, has not only translated into lost lives and squandered billions but has led to the neglect of other "emerging threats."
The speech, a Sunday opinion piece in the New York Times that outlined his Iraq position, and a television ad released today that is intended to highlight his efforts to secure nuclear weapons are all part of Obama's all-out effort to establish his national security bona fides in advance of the fall race with McCain.
And his Republican opponent has been firing back all week. Today in Arizona during a town meeting, McCain scrapped prepared comments on the economy in favor a speech of his own - one that defended his support of the surge and attempted to paint Obama as a neophyte "trying to sound tough."
"I won't bluster, and I won't make idle threats," McCain said, touting his "many years of political and military experience." The Arizona senator talked about the strategy needed to stabilize Afghanistan, including sending in more troops and unifying the command in the country.
"In wartime," he said, "judgment and experience matter."
The first question from the town meeting audience? What can helpless-feeling Americans do about the price of gasoline?
Reader Comments
John McCain's Sons
Talk about putting your most valuable where your mouth is! Apparently this was not "newsworthy" enough for the media to comment about. Can either of the other presidential candidates truthfully come close to this? ...Just a question for each of us to seek an answer, and not a statement. You see...character is what's shown when the public is not looking. There were no cameras or press invited to what you are about to read about, and the story comes from one person in New Hampshire. One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and a heartfelt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers - -soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier. Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or press. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan's brother Michael Cleary, a 24-year-old Army First Lieutenant killed by an ambush... a roadside bomb. No one mentioned the obvious: In just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils. 'I can't imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that ......' Ms. Flanagan recalled,
choking up. 'We lost a dear one,' she finished. Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father's New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud. Two of Jimmy's three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war. I chose to share this with those who I believe will pass it on, to others who will pass it on. We hear so much inflated trash out there. How about a simple act of kindness ... and dedication to others placed above oneself? Has anybody heard if Barack Hussein Obama has served in The American Armed
Services?
This is for all you Barack voters.
From Barack's book, Audacity of Hope:
"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an
ugly direction."
HE DID NOT SAY STAND WITH AMERICANS!!!!!
On Getting Out of Iraq
The war and our economy are intrinsically linked. This is the first war we have ever prosecuted ON CREDIT. Our 3 Trillion dollar debt is owned by China. They are exporting far more goods than we are, and refusing to adjust their monetary structure so that in trade they continue to have an unfair advantage. As the dollar weakens, the amount of interest we will eventually have to fork over to China will increase in inverse proportion.
We will also eventually pay another trillion in lifetime healthcare for the veterans of this war, because modern medicine is now able to keep 96% of our injured military alive. Many of them suffer brain damage from percussive weaponry.
Meanwhile, we are engaging in the most significant transfer of wealth in human history, paying foreign nations for oil, which is the real reason we invaded Iraq in the first place.
We need to extricate ourselves from Iraq and change the way we live. We have become a consumer nation. Big Business invented TV to dumb us down, and they have done an excellent job.
In 26 years in the Senate, John McCain has never been known for his foreign relations expertise because he doesn't have any. He got shot down in Viet Nam, got caught, and refused to leave when it was discovered his dad was a military honcho, so he stayed, dumped his recently disabled wife for a billionaire blonde twenty years his junior, and sat around for a quarter of a century waiting to make his POW experience his cash cow for running the country. In his college class of 289, only 5 people were dumber than John McCain. Nelson Mandela he ain't, folks.
All he knows is war. Since Georgia paid his staffer Scheunemann $830,000., McCain immediately started to insist we kick Russia out of the G8 when they responded to Georgia's army going into Ossetia. That'll work, won't it? Isolate Russia? An isolated Russia is far more dangerous!! We need to hug the bear--the Arabs say, "Keep your friends close, your enemies closer." The L.A TIMES suggested this week that we should, in fact, invite Russia into NATO. McCain would just love to be your next war president!!!! Wake up, America.
Iraq v. the economy
The last line of Ms. Halloran's article reminds us yet again what many have begun to point out- our struggling economy has eclipsed the war in Iraq as the biggest worry on the minds of Americans. It might be time for the candidates to gear down in their attempts to paint each other as the wrong commander-in-chief and ramp up the debate on things like how to increase America's energy independence.
The price of fuel, along with the housing market and commodities prices, is one of the biggest factors holding down American consumer confidence and contributing to sluggish growth. The president has lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling but Obama and McCain are just as fractious on that issue as on Iraq. Were congress to lift their ban and let drilling proceed, how would McCain ensure that the environment is protected to the greatest possible extent? Might we encourage American oil companies to reinvest their profits in viable alternative energy? If the ban is upheld by congress, what would Obama do to stem the deluge of American cash to OPEC? Will windfall taxes the government collects be (at least partially) used to subsidize industry advances in alternative energy?
Any attempt to defuse the developing energy crisis in the short-term must be paired with a longer-term solution to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create clean, renewable fuel sources. The candidates would do well to clearly articulate their plans in this arena, and we as citizens need to start thinking seriously about what sort of short-term sacrifices we are willing to make for a sustainable future.
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