In an interview with the BBC about Iraq, General Petraeus was asked, "Do you think you will ever use the word "victory?" Petraeus answers: "I don't know that I will." He adds, "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade...it's not war with a simple slogan." Listening, McCain? Your hero says "Quit the Victory talk"...
During a talk Wednesday about Iraq at the Heritage Foundation
,a conservative Washington policy organization, Petraeus repeatedly made statements that bolstered the foreign-policy proposals of Sen. Barack Obama, McCain’s Democratic rival, or cut against McCain’s own lines.
Petraeus agreed with Obama about opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.
That is virtually identical to Obama’s position, when he said he was willing to negotiate without preconditions but only after sufficient diplomatic preparation. And that’s not all - Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if they are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”
Petraeus also said a surge identical to what he used in Iraq would not work in Afghanistan, as McCain had claimed in the Sep 26 debate. He essentially agreed with Gen. McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who Obama quoted at the debate: “The word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word ’surge.’ There are countless other differences between Iraq and Afghanistan”. By the way, McCain now says “The same “strategy” (not “surge” anymore, mind you, but “strategy”) - very, very different, because of the conditions and the situation — but the same fundamental strategy that succeeded in Iraq.” Very, very different, and yet the same?? Just shows why he’s McSame, he thinks “different” really means “same”.
Truth is, whether he's talking about his endless war in Iraq, trying to incite rednecks with Barack's middle name, or dredging up Ayers or Wright for the billionth time, even the
hard-core Republicans are tuning him out these days!
No comments:
Post a Comment