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So, who will this tick off more?

I\'m thinking that they may need to get the camera out for this one.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 19th, 2009 at 09:38 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

[Update: heh. See also bk's diary on the subject.]

Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel

WASHINGTON — Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from President-elect Barack Obama.

As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq. (He’d lose a war! He’d stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. McCain’s advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?

[snip]

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.


I mean, on the one hand, McCain’s not exactly setting himself up here to be taken any more seriously by conservatives than he already is (i.e., not at all). We’re going to be fighting the two major factions of the Democratic Party* over the course of this next election cycle; egregiously playing nice-nice isn’t going to be particularly welcome.

On the other hand… John McCain. So wrong about national security issues that Barack Obama used him to vet his foreign policy picks. To the point where Obama acted on McCain’s concerns about at least one candidate. Anybody think that anybody from the antiwar movement got the courtesy of having Obama ask a few clarifications from Gates or Clinton?

All in all, I figure that we’re ahead on points. If for no other reason that this story indicates that pretty much everyone who actually matters agrees that the GOP had the right stance on the war.

Moe Lane

PS: This South Park episode is looking pretty prescient, huh?

*Legislative and executive.

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COMMENTS

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  • Lamplighter331

    I was fooled! I was bamboozled! When Senator McCain chose Governor Palin as a running mate, I fell for the chicanery that he just might be a born again conservative.

    I was wrong.

    The real question here, is that for the sake of a bipartisan world, has McCain now become the 60th Democrat in the Senate?

    I stand SO corrected on Senator McCain.

  • Jack

    You can pick all of the Generals you want and God knows there are literally thousands and thousands of them to choose from anymore, but if you have lost the NCOs and the Captains you will lose.

    When you ban torture, when you ban handing them over to third parties for questioning, when you close Gitmo, when you show that you are more concerned what people on the street think of you then keeping the country safe we will lose.

    John McCain was right about the surge but for all of the wrong reasons. He was wrong to advocate for greater force numbers. MACVSOG proved that a handful of men allowed to live on their wits and play by their own rules can destroy any enemy.

    It was the MACVSOG that McCain and the Academy officers of his generation hated with a passion. We were the ones that McCain and his ilk including GEN Swartzkoff were so opposed to after Vietnam. The hatred was so deep that Swartzkoff had Special Operations Forces doing menial labor in Saudi Arabia while preparing for the first Gulf War. It was the British and French that convinced him finally to use these men in preparing the battle field.

    The smart Generals such Petraeus , and Franks knew better. McCain got lucky with his support for the surge. The reasons he listed as being in favor of it were not the reasons it worked.

  • septembergurl

    the recent passing of Gen. Victor Krulak last month. The obituaries I read all pointed out that Krulak, who commanded Marines in the Pacific from 1964-68, had argued for two strategies in the Vietnam War. the first was the “inkblot” strategy, as it was called, which meant placing marines in villages where they lived and protected the people and gradually expanded security (the counterinsurgency tactics employed so successfully by Petraeus and Odierno in Iraq 2007-8). LBJ rejected this in favor of the strategy of attrition and holding places like Khe Sahn promoted by Westmoreland.

    The other was the mining of Haiphong harbor, which Krulak advocated in a meeting with Johnson, telling the President he was bombing the wrong targets. LBJ did not want to hear this and consequently (so Krulak believed) passed over Krulak for the Marine position on the JCS, though Krulak was widely considered the leading Marine of his generation. The rest, as they say, is history.

    Obama is far less prepared to make command decisions than LBJ was. It seems to me that moving from Brent Scowcroft, his previous eminence grise, to McCain, is a big improvement in terms of being able to understand the decisions he will have to make. Your point as I take it is that McCain argued for an escalation in numbers without the counterinsurgency strategy. That may be true originally, but McCain argued for all aspects of the surge very cogently once it took hold and was key in guaranteeing it would run its course rather than being terminated in 2007, as the Democrats wanted.

  • icbm

    McCain’s support for more troops in Iraq was based on an idea of a counterinsurgency strategy that was similar to the one adopted. No, he did not come up with every detail, but he had the principles down. He asked for more troops, but he did so because a proper counterinsurgency strategy required it.

    And he started arguing for the new strategy in August 2003, long before most others did.

    http://www.cfr.org/publication/6502/us_situation_in_iraq_and_afghanistan.html

    Here’s an excerpt on point:

    Simply put, there does not appear to be a strategy behind our current force levels in Iraq, other than to preserve the illusion that we have sufficient forces in place to meet our objectives. It makes even less sense to defend a troop ceiling that has been in place since April as American forces and our Iraqi allies come under increasingly savage attack.

    U.S. military forces have sealed off the town of Tikrit. This is a welcome step. It’s a hotbed of resistance. It would make sense to pursue this same strategy in Ramadi, Fallujah, and other Ba’athist strongholds within the Sunni triangle. But we do not have the forces in place to do that.

    To win in Iraq, we should increase the number of forces in- country, including Marines and Special Forces, to conduct offensive operations. I believe we must have in place another full division, giving us the necessary manpower to conduct a focused counterinsurgency campaign across the Sunni triangle that seals off enemy operating areas, conducts search and destroy operations and holds territory. Such a strategy would be the kind of new mission General Sanchez agreed would require additional forces.

  • icbm

    “I believe we must have in place another full division, giving us the necessary manpower to conduct a focused counterinsurgency campaign across the Sunni triangle that seals off enemy operating areas, conducts search and destroy operations and holds territory. Such a strategy would be the kind of new mission General Sanchez agreed would require additional forces.”

    In case you didn’t want to go through everything I quoted above…

  • jonnot

    He might as well, he’s already bent over and grabbed his ankles for the O’s administration.

  • Tbone

    After all McCain was primarily responsible for his winning the election. McCain’s ability to keep Republicans from voting made ACORN’s efforts look inconsequential.

    In fact, in a fair world, McCain would be indicted for voter intimdation.

  • Vegas_Rick
  • 6eorge Jetson
  • Just_Saying

    I only supported McCain because I like Sarah Palin. I now believe McCain wanted to lose, and nominated Palin, not realizing what a force she would be — and how much she’d work her heart out for his campaign.

    McCain was not a traitor in the military, but he’s certainly a traitor in the Senate — a traitor to the Republican Party, and, more importantly, a traitor to this great land.

    I have no respect for McCain.

  • spainishirish

    most people realize McCain knows he is a dupe.

    Yes, Obama’s actions show he and those around him realize the GOP was right about the war. Obviously they aren’t “reaching out” because they know the GOP position was correct. They are “reaching out” because the relentlessly demonized war effort is unpopular, and they want to put a Republican face on their decision-making here. And if things go south, Obama and company will blame McCain’s input as the reason why. This is what they consider bipartisanship.

    It’s the same old tired thing, time and time again. McCain may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but it is painfully obvious even he knows he is a tool. So whenever unpopular legislation or decisions pop up, the old guy gets a grip and grin with The One. It’s pathetic and no longer the source of anger, only pity that transcends loathing.

  • Martin Knight
  • icbm

    n/t

  • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com LJ “Beaglescout” Miller

    I’ve said so before in the comments and it’s still true. And even in the campaign it was obvious that Obama had no ideas on foreign policy. He listened to McCain’s foreign policy, waited a few days for the media to be able to cover it up, and adopted McCain’s ideas. The media covered the whole thing up.

  • Rapunzel46

    We need someone here in Arizona with a backbone willing to go up against McCain and his boys in the AZ Chamber of Commerce and GOP who stop challenges to him every six years; this is what allows him to ignore the state and people he represents for his own personal egocentric world in DC.

  • JSobieski

    It would be nice if we could primary him. Or alternatively, get him to move to a non-red state.

    Neither option is likely.