Senator John McCain of Arizona, who lost to Barack Obama in last fall’s presidential race, and who has been critical of the President’s Economic Stimulus bill, has surprised a lot of people by endorsing Obama’s plan to end America’s combat role in Iraq by August 31, 2010.
Additionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff leader, Michael Mullin, has been on Sunday interview shows, making clear that the military are fully behind the President’s plans to end combat in 2010.Â
Considering that McCain and the military leaders publicly supported President Bush’s surge in 2007-2008, and that McCain ran on that issue against Obama, it can be said that this turn around is surprising.
I suppose that one could say that the military are required publicly to back the defense policies of the Commander in Chief, but it just makes one wonder how much of the public backing of the Bush surge was real, and how much of it was just being obedient soldiers.Â
In any case, as McCain and the military top brass switch around their positions, one can only be cynical and say that the whole Iraq war situation was simply "politics" at the expense of the lives and health of so many young Americans. This also means President Obama needs to rethink the wisdom of a so called "surge" in Afghanistan, which over this past weekend, Conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper of Canada stated has no chance of changing the situation on the ground in that war torn nation which has successfully in the past held off the British and the Russians and, for the past seven years, the NATO forces.
Have you considered that Obama’s Iraq war plans are the same plans that Bush had all last year. The agreement that Bush worked out with the Iraqi parliament has US combat troops leaving on a two stage process and every troop out by 2011. This is the same as Obama’s plans. This may explain why he’s not getting opposed by the right or the military.