The War Speeches

Fred Kaplan bashes both McCain and Obama for their visions on Iraq and Afghanistan, but the McCain-bashing comes sooner and louder.  I will highlight this from the Obama side of the ledger:

Obama's speech on Iraq does all the things that McCain's does not. But some passages suggest that he either underestimates the difficulties of some of his proposals or doesn't understand their full implications.

For instance, Obama states that setting a timetable for withdrawal "pushes Iraq's leaders toward a political solution." Maybe, but it might also push them into their corners to prepare for the coming civil war. What if it does the latter? Will Obama postpone the departure?

Comments

[bgates]

If Matt Yglesias had watched more GI Joe cartoons as a kid, he could have been Fred Kaplan. Kaplan claims that the success of the surge is unclear, but he declines to refer to his own column of less than a year ago, "Defeat without Disaster", in which he advocated ethnic partition for the country as the least worst imaginable option. He also calls out McCain for not paying attention to Afghanistan (he certainly hasn't gone to any of Obama's committee meetings on the topic).
The next thing Fred Kaplan writes that's worth reading will be the first.

[Mitch H.]

I concur. Fred Kaplan's opinion is pretty much worthless. I haven't read him in over a year.

[Cecil Turner]

The next thing Fred Kaplan writes that's worth reading will be the first.

Yeah, and this one, predicting the failure of the surge, is an equally good example, wherein he cites the same lack of troops that he claims indicates McCain's "fantasy":

But security is the prerequisite, and to achieve enduring security, the hard arithmetic indicates that Bush needs to send in a lot more troops than 20,000. The problem is, he doesn't have them, and he won't be able to get them for many years, under the best of circumstances.

He also manages a Vietnam analogy, faint praise for Petraeus, and a call to "accept the reality." I'm not sure why anyone, reading that spectacularly wrong assessment with the benefit of hindsight, would presume to bet on Kaplan (and against Petraeus and McCain) again.

[sophy]

Please do not hesitate to have runescape gold . It is funny.