18 March 2008
While Obama and Clinton duke it out here at home, McCain is stumping in Iraq but designating his trip as an official Congressional delegation. He is joined by two more hawks, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and Senator Lindsey Graham. They will also visit Israel, London and Paris. In London he will have a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising luncheon. As a candidate for president, I guess he’s trying to make points abroad. He might make a hit with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior military commander in the country but perhaps the Iraqis will see him as someone who, as president, would keep the American military in Iraq for a very long time even if Bush is gone. The Shiites might be very happy to have us stay and prop up the current government. The Sunni Arabs on the other hand see us a occupiers and want us out. While no political advisors are traveling with McCain, I think that he is using the trip for political gain.
It’s no surprise that the strong backers of the war and keeping our troops there, see wonderful success in the “surge”, but is it really? Deaths of American military are on the rise and many deaths of Iraqis from suicide bombers continue. V.P. Cheney is also in Baghdad and he too is extolling the success of the “surge”. What happened to the benchmarks that the Iraqi government was supposed to meet. Instead we are hearing that money from Iraqi oil is funding insurgents. McCain is blaming most of the violence on al-Qaeda but it seems to me that a lot of violence is still being instigated by Sunni against Shiite incursions.
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