McCain: The Rationale for War is to Break the Enemy's Will
Mr. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran who never found a war he didn't like John McCain thinks we should not be talking about a timeline to withdraw from Afghanistan. McCain also apparently thinks that the eight years we've already spent in Afghanistan hasn't been long enough to "break the enemy's will" so we can "win". I would like for Sen. McCain to explain how anyone "wins" an occupation. Of course that would require him admitting that's what we're doing there, which is never going to happen.
DAVID GREGORY: We're back with Senator John McCain. Welcome back to the program. A lot to discuss here. A lot to react to. Let's get to your big issue this week. The issue of withdrawal. You heard Secretary Gates say here today, "July 2011 is a date certain for the beginning of the withdrawal." Do you have a problem with that?
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Yes. But let me also say-- David, I support the President's decision. I think it's the right decision. I think that it can lead to success. It's a tough decision on his part to send young Americans into harm's way. As Secretary Gates said, casualties will go up, tragically. But I think he made the right decision. And I think that-- he is-- the reality is, he's not only-- a tough decision to send young Americans into harm's way. But is-- significant elements of his own party are-- are opposed.
So, I strongly support the decision. The problem with the date certain now is that not only there's a problem with that itself, but there's-- a significant contribution between what Secretaries Gates and Clinton were saying and what the President--
DAVID GREGORY: Contradiction. Contradiction.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Contradiction.
DAVID GREGORY: Yeah.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Between what-- and what his spokesperson said just a couple of days ago. When he said the President said-- he said, "I'm directly quotin' the President that the withdrawal date is in gray-- chiseled in stone. And I am the chiseler." Now that's pretty straightforward.
So, what has that done? It has caused reactions such as you saw with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Policymakers throughout the region, Pakistan, India, Iran, as well as Afghanistan are now trying to figure out whether they can really go all in and support this effort. Or do they have to accommodate, because if we leave they have to stay in the region? So, it needs to be resolved.
It needs to be resolved in this way. That we will not leave on a date certain. But we have every confidence, I do, I have every confidence within a year to 18 months we can achieve significant success.
We were able to do that in Iraq. And we will leave and not-- allow the Taliban to make comments like Taliban prisoners are-- are saying, "You've got the watches and we have the time." We don't want to send that message.
DAVID GREGORY: But the President responded-- to this week-- privately and during-- during his address to the nation. Saying, "If he just used that logic, then that's the rationale for forever war. Then you don't ever leave."
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well, the rationale for war is to break the enemy's will. That's the whole rationale for war. Do you break the enemy's will by saying, "We're gonna be there-- or send a message we're gonna be there for a year and a half or so and then we're gonna begin to leave no matter what the circumstances are"? Or do you tell 'em, "We're gonna win. And we're gonna break your will. And then we're gonna leave." That's-- that's-- that's a huge factor--
DAVID GREGORY: All right, on that--
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: --in the conduct of war. Especially when you're conducting counterinsurgency.
Like here, Heather, excellent clip. And again, evidence that JM (and company) will bury themselves in their own words without anyone having to twist them, as in the Irrelevant Palin non-clip earlier. Kudos.
when people speak only in portions, you know, uh uh uh, in sentences in harms way, freedom-loving people, Americans of course, the only true freedom-lovings, uh uh uh, peoples of the world know us by the trail of, uh uh, you know what i mean, for gosh's sakes. Hate Good, Obama bad. Duh!
does this guy ever finish a sentence? A thought? Also, can (or has) Grayson gotten up in David Gregory's grille? what's up with that,David? Not a real balanced show, like ever, dude!
Man o man
your name's Lebowski, Lebowski... and your wife is Bunny
McCain is not the one sending 30,000 more troops into this hellhole.
Obama is.
You should be asking Obama how he expects to "win an occupation".
You are entitled to take out your frustration on McCain, but all he is doing is basically agreeing with Obama's foolish and dangerous actions.
And McCain need not be concerned about an exit strategy.
There is none.
Clinton and Gates have confirmed that.
And we're gonna break your will.
Like I pointed out in another post, could this idiot POSSIBLY know less about the Middle East?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
He's a Republican - his mind is in a tizzy.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
and he is in lock-step with Obama.
It's easy to pick on ol' McCain - but he is not in power.
Obama is the guy doing this now.
Really tragic.
McCain is on the sidelines applauding - along with Rove.
That would be for McLame to give us the tip on how to capture bin Laden. I guess since the public didn't buy his crap he patriotically is keeping that secret
Politics is ugly
We just have to create a breach in the front lines with our armor, and exploit and take out his supply lines! And decimate his industrial base! Then, Osama will take his own life in his bunker and the civilians will wave their kerchiefs and honor us with a parade! And I can make a speech in front of a huge American flag and the troops will know what to do!
Moron.
yeah that will happen at any time now , the " enemy " will just get tired , quit , go home to their middle class neighborhoods and just live the good life taking it easy . JC , do we have some morons for " leaders" in this country ! Incredible .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
.
100,000 soldiers chasing 100 Taliban...
... To and fro; In and out of Pakistan.
YEAR NUMBER 8, 9, 10, 11...
... Are we there yet?
But it will make for some good campaign fodder...
... And a hefty excuse to extend into YEAR 12, 13, 14.
NO?
.
Starve the WAR Beast...
... Save the World.
.
Who's will was broken when he ratted out his men in Nam?
... How'd that work out?
.
Starve the WAR Beast...
... Save the World.
He crashed a few planes and was a POW for five years. It's not like he was a field commander. He was a victim of war, not an expert. But at least he wasn't a chickenhawk. It's not half as ridiculous as hearing Rove and Cheney tell us all how wars should be run.
...he served on a committee that denied the relatives of Viet Nam veterans access to records, and refused to admit that any could still be alive in SE Asia. He definitely has a lot to hide, and psychological issues from his brainwashing.
As someone that was directly affected by that decision, I am still of the opinion we should have left McCain to rot in Vietnam.
mcstain is a POS who abandoned everyone who served, yet Kerry gets swiftboated.
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
I'm wondering why we are still talking to this guy who actually hasn't been in or around a real war for 35+ years ??? He has clearly forgotten what war is about and is now spewing things he must have gotten from his buttbuddy, Lindsay Graham..ham..ham, who must have gotten his info out of a comic book...
As Excelsior said earlier... This (these) clowns know so little about the middle east they may as well be talking about Pittsburgh....
a senile fool, who graduated at the bottom of his Navy class, giving strategical advice based on Rocky IV.
We certainly are circling the drain as a nation, aren't we?
Just so long as no body is taking that advice anymore. One can only hope.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Shame we all have to pay for it.
This isn't about any enemy. It's about setting up a puppet government that will protect the pipeline going through their country. Neocons want the empire all over the ME, that is the thug factor at work here. I hope they fail.
Is it the 21st century yet?
Thanks for clearing that up for us David. You knew exactly what he meant, didn’t you David, therefore we should never suspect that your show is scripted, should we David?
Given the structure of that sentence, it was pretty obvious what the mistaken word should have been.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
What was his name as a POW oh yeah the Prince is waht they called him, yeah a real talker this one. Their isn't a American he has met that he doesn't want to send to a War For PROFIT.
I've lost all respect for this puppet of the Military industrial Complex, and don't go their folks a a retired combat vet. I lived by my General Orders seems this is the only one they called Prince.
There isnt a American who he hs met that he wouldn't send to War must keep his buddies coffers filled with coffins (oops thats PROFITS)
More macho bullshit from this nasty man the Nation only last year told to go to hell.
A fucking loser with all of the answers.
A crotchety old man yelling at the rest of the world to get off his lawn. "Irrelevant" doesn't begin to describe him.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
this crotchety old man is in complete agreement with Obama's nutty decision.
I want to hear from Obama administration officials, not the losers of recent elections.
Failed student
Failed pilot
Failed POW
Failed husband
Failed politician
Failed Presidential candidate.
.
... by inserting a covert agent who would infiltrate the enemy's most technologically advanced and expensive service, then crash or destroy at least five of the enemy's most expensive weapons, maybe start a fire around dangerous ordinance, eventually get captured by us. and make any propaganda statements we might wish.
Just a thought....
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Make sure we go after the Afghan Navy too, which poses an understated but significant threat. Perhaps John Boy can offer more of his sage advice to us being a Navy man.
This sarcastic post is now concluded.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
.
My bad.
And instead of breaking the enemy's will---let's just send George Will over there to fix this mess. With his unimpeachable creds on climate change, I'm sure he'd be a first rate military genius too--since he seems to believe in his utter infallibility in all subjects we'll give him a chance to prove it.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
on them.
George Will can cut them down with his rapier wit.
Oh jeepers! I just got through the last McLame clip/comments. Dare i enter this one? Here goes.
far left loon >.<
draws us that map to where Osama and his trusty gang of terr'ists been hidin' out, we kin corral 'em and end this thing purty darn quick, yew betcha'!
The rationale for war, any war, is generally contrived and stupid and usually revolves around Greed and Arrogance. These military invasions and occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan (and eventually Iran and Pakistan) are based upon imperial arrogance and plutocratical greed. There is no real ENEMY in Afghanistan (except maybe the warlords who won't let Georgie and Dickie have their heroin & oil & gas))
As per Pogo "We have seen the enemy and the enemy is US."
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
And there is an enemy in Afghanistan: < 100 Al Qaeda who will kill us in our sleep. We need 30,000 more troops to deal with them.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
disguise themselves as DEA agents and try to sneak into this country through Mexico City after we alert the drug cartels, we can eliminate them without any military involvement whatsoever. That solves the problem. Bring all the soldiers home tomorrow. Case closed.
..Pearl Harbor?
..Grenada?
..Beirut?
..9/11, D.C.?
The rationale for defense of the nation AND going to WAR is generally altruistic and just. The greed and contriviances come later and with it PERCEPTIONS that are not altruistic and just.
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
It's apparent that McCain got a free ticket to DC and a career entirely based on having been a POW , it sure wasn't because of his smarts , the guy has a brain the size of a pea . He rode daddy's coat tail all the way in the military .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
where's bin Laden.........mcCain? it's time for this guy to retire.
what happened to that?
because Bin Laden is with Waldo.
Thank god this hawkish moron isn't our president.
It's not all or nothing.
Sounds from a compromised brain losing lucidity so rapidly as to be inept at monitoring its own oratory.
deebee
I seem to recall someone else who said something similar.
Ah, yes.
General von Falkenhayn, Imperial German Army Chief of Staff, describing his rationale for the Battle of Verdun.
Of course, that was 1916, a few years before McCain was born. I wonder if the 1914-1918 dustup was ever part of the Annapolis curriculum.
ok folks wake up to the repubs mentality
mc war would have bombed every man woman and child in north vietnam to win that illegal war.
human life means nothing to this man or most repubs
he was a born loser as he crashed three planes in flight school and the only thing that kept him in flight school was his big whig military daddy.
he crashed two more planes before he went into combat and was shot down within 20 hrs of bombing over north vietnam.
let an enemy bomb american cities and see how we would treat their bombers of men women and children.
we are a war mongering self righteous nation.
even most journalists are imperialists or out and out war mongers.
and we wondering why we are self destructing at home in morals and economics.
there is nothing about america that is christian.
the devil itself could have not come up with a more corrupt economic system than capitalism.
even obama with his capitalist mentality is sending more soldiers to die and kill afghans so he can win an election in 2012 and of course appease the american war machine all the while he is picking up his peace trophy.
that is the insanity of capitalism.
americans love affair with capitalism is turing in on them and most dont have a clue what is causing that self destruction. not a clue.
you cannot be a capitalist and be a christian as capitalism is based on survival of the fittest.
does survival of the fittest sound familiar???????
and the atheists with their materialism think they are the ones with reasoning abilities.
the end is near but we will learn much from our mistakes but not before we become a third world status in the world.
we are living proof that wealth can be as harsh of a teacher as poverty.
few will understand my words very few.
maybe here they will maybe not.
..capitalism. Your talking about christian values and forgetting deadly sins among them GREED and that's what drives the desire now not the search for perfection in the eyes of the lord or some such. That's what Presbyterians, Episcopalians, et. al. brought here. Others, decendants to these early settlers, bastardized the process with GREED. GREED IS NOT GOOD FOR AMERICA!
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
I got this from
Ivaw.com..
(Iraq vets against the war)
Hows a 5 year contract,
and billions in taxpayers money sound???
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/30/dyncorp-kbr-...
McCain was trying to break their will when he crash landed on them.
Talk about Mr. War Monger.
He needs to relax and think beore he speaks.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
the Manchurian Candidate, then, now, and always.
Well, at least McCain's conscience can be assuaged by the the fact that as the USA goes ever deeper into debt to the Chinese in order to wage interminable overseas wars of imperialist aggression, the goals and ambitions of his two masters continue to merge.
Oops, my bad! McCain doesn't actually have a conscience - he is an ambitious misogynistic sociopath, just like all the other Rape-ublicans. Anyway, WTF does McCain actually know about winning wars, as opposed to being a POW? That POW thing, he was good at that, so he does know about "breaking the enemy's will' - personal experience, don't you know?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
McCain, Karl Rove and other unsavory pols are all on board with Obama's wonderful idea to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
And McCain needn't worry about a timeline for a withdrawal.
Clinton and Gates have confirmed that Obama was just blowing smoke in the direction of liberals by hinting at that.
Our democracy is really sick.
McCain, McCain, McCain! Every time I turn around, McCain is shoved in my face! I am so sick of hearing about what McCain thinks of this, and what McCain thinks of that, I could throw up. Who cares what McCain thinks? I mean my God, someone needs to remind everyone that MCCAIN LOST.
Think about it. When Bush defeated Kerry, did we hear about what Kerry thought every day of the week? Did we hear about what Kerry thought EVEN ONCE? I think not. I think not.
Proof positive that the media is controlled by the GOP. Thank God for the Internet. They don't control it yet, but they are trying. Just give them time. We better type while we can.
but thanks to Obama, we are escalating the war in Afghanistan.
So from McCain's point of view, everything is going along just fine.
Plenty of war.
No exit strategy.
Why do they focus on McCain? I don't know.
I do know that we had better train our focus onto Obama.
It is he who is leading us down the garden path to oblivion.
It's an Agatha Christie novel?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Said they guy who couldn't break sarah.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I'm no expert, but familure with the pain...I like the idea of a time-line, just a hell of a lot shorter! Spent a little time in Nom myself and found myself surrounded by lossers at home directing a "political action" with little support even there, as made to feel the part of the problem...well My Solution! We declared a time-line, and when we pull out, if we're not satisfide with our acomplisments, when our men are out of harms way....bomb, bomb, bomb the shit out of them! Take every damn forien car and make bullits and bombs out of them and level the field!
Actual governing of the nation must not be as exciting as "managing" a war. It must be downright boring for McCain and his fellow assholes to do something truly beneficial for the non-lobbyists that make up the majority of people in this country.
It's Obama's. He could have done the right thing and pulled the plug on this disaster the day he took office. But he didn't. And now he's escalating it. Idiot.
Said it before, I'll say it again: History has shown: from Alexander to the Soviet Union, Afghanistan is where Empires go to die.
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
Is more insanity!
This whole thing could have been handled without more then a couple of thousand people's involvement.
It was never anything that required going to war! It was and should have beed a lawenforcement operation.
I cannot believe we are still going down this same road to destruction.
You can never make something good out of something that was done for evil reasons.
This war in Afghanistan was undertaken for the sole purpose of getting into Iraq!
I thought we were voting for change now I see all we voted for was a different person to fuck up the world!
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness that is killing America!
I support Obama's decision. I have no doubt that he consulted with the appropriate people and fully deliberated on this VERY difficult decision. There's more going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. For example, sounds like Pakistan is now willing to put the screws to the Taliban and Al Qaeda in that very porous border region. They were only making pretenses before, but now realize that you can't appease these dangerous people. I know Obama would love to get out of there, but as commander in chief, our national security is his major responsibility. As for McCain, he's a fool. I get sick and tired of hearing people say, "we stay til we win". Well, what exactly does that look like??
By the way, we should be damn thankful that McCain/Palin didn't win that election. Can you imagine?
So you're solution is to step on sidewalk cracks?
Where's your plan to get Osama, you liar?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Pakistan has Osama. We have Palin. Thanks John.
Just heard someone on a call-in who has lived in Pakistan/Afghanistan for 30 years relate a saying used there, "If you've waited 40 years for revenge, you haven't waited long enough."
The US or any other Empire will never, ever WIN in Afghanistan.
Ask the Russians what happens when you try to break their will. After more then 9 years the only thing that was broken was Russia and it's economy. But I guess no one ever learns from history. I wonder what would have happened if Bush didn't announce our intent to attack and just took our time, use our spy satellites and drones, locate and drop in our special op's. Oh yea, and stayed out of Iraq.
McCain is a clown, and if was ever not confirmed before, than line brought it home. He said this during one of the debates, when he was asked a question about terrorist fighting our troups in the wars. Supposedly he's got a tough rep. that would make them back-down.
What a clown. I grew up on the streets of L.A. and there were legitmately some guys with street cred who could make a statement like that, and it meant something. McCain's only rep. is around his household.
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