HELP US OBIWAN McCAIN; YOU'RE OUR ONLY HOPE:

The Bush-McCain Face-Off: The McCain-Bush conflict has been one of the most-watched soap operas in Washington. Now it appears the Arizona senator may have a rude surprise for the president. (David Corn, September 21, 2004, The Nation)

[T]his year McCain sucked it up and hit the trail for Bush, even as the Bush brigade was mounting the same sort of trash-and-slash attack against McCain's colleague, John Kerry. At least, McCain could point to the war in Iraq as a point of agreement with Bush. Though McCain, according to a McCain adviser, has not accepted the neoconservatives' argument (adopted by Bush) that the Iraq war is necessary as an initial step in remaking the region, he believed that because Saddam Hussein posed a possible threat and was such a tyrant he needed "to be taken out."

But maybe there was another reason beyond loyalty to the party and to the commander in chief why McCain saddled up with Bush. Perhaps he wanted to get near enough to knife Bush – metaphorically speaking, of course. As in, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. (Think The Godfather.) [...]

Earlier this month, an editor at The Nation, dreaming of magic-bullet scenarios, asked me whether Secretary of State Colin Powell might break with Bush in October and swing the election to Kerry. Not a chance I said, read this. Powell is completely in the tank for the Bush crew, enabling the neocons. But McCain – now he might cause further difficult for his "good friend" in the White House in the final weeks of the election.

It's funny enough that the only hope for the folks at the Nation is that some Republican or another help them out, but Mr. Corn seems to have completely missed John McCain's point. The Senator, like his fellow veteran Senator Chuck Hagel, wants Iraq to become another Vietnam for personal psychological reasons--they seem bitter about their experience and insistent that others share it. John Kerry can hardly embrace the idea--a neoconservative one, as was/is Mr. McCain the candidate of the neocons--that we should expend as many men and as much material as required to impose a certain system on a unified Iraq and root out every last militant whackjob. If the Senator endorsed that position Ralph Nader would hit double-digits.

President Bush ends up positioned perfectly, not just right as to strategy but in the middle politically. You've got Senator McCain emulating William Westmoreland--wanting to pursue the strategy that had made Vietnam quagmirish--and Senator Kerry reprising his own--wanting to cut and run--while Mr. Bush has learned the twin lessons that the others failed to and is Iraqifying the war, just as General Creighton Abrams won in Vietnam. Mr, Bush is the pragmatist who is utilizing what has worked well before while the hawkish Mr. McCain advocates that which has failed in the past and Senator Kerry proposes to duplicate that which was disastrous.

MORE:
Marines Bide Their Time In Insurgent-Held Fallujah: Officers Say Iraqi Army Must Be Fit to Retake City (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, September 21, 2004, Washington Post)

From the porthole of his bunker just outside the city, U.S. Marine Capt. Jeff Stevenson could see no more than the first few rows of brick-and-concrete homes along Fallujah's urban fringe as he squinted into the setting desert sun. But his obscured view was enough to sense trouble. [...]

"Fallujah has become a cancer," declared Stevenson, echoing a metaphor used by several senior U.S. commanders in Iraq.

A collection of anti-American forces -- former Baath Party loyalists, Islamic extremists and foreign militants -- have been expanding their presence in Fallujah since the Marines withdrew from positions in the city in April and handed over responsibility for security to the Fallujah Brigade. According to U.S. military officials and residents, the insurgents have since taken over the local government, co-opted and cowed Iraqi security forces, and turned the area into a staging ground for terrorist attacks in Baghdad, located about 35 miles to the east.

But the U.S. military command in Iraq is in no hurry to order the Marines back into the city. Officers such as Stevenson, a tall Californian whose unit, the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment, would be among the front-line forces in an offensive, are biding their time in bunkers and observation posts outside Fallujah. Most of their days are spent keeping a highway around the city free of roadside bombs.

Instead of sending Marines charging into Fallujah as they did in April -- a move that radicalized residents and drew scores of fighters from outside Iraq to join the battle -- U.S. commanders say they want to wait until Iraq's new army is large enough, and trained enough, to assume a leading role in retaking the city.

"It doesn't do any good for us to go in and clean it up if it's a pure United States or coalition operation," said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, the top commander responsible for Fallujah and the rest of western Iraq. "We need Iraqi security forces with us. We need to be side by side when we move in, so that when it is said and done, when you open your door the next day and look out, there's an Iraqi policeman, an Iraqi National Guardsman, an Iraqi soldier on your street."

Sattler's predecessor, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who relinquished his command earlier this month, insisted that "the Marines we have there now could crush the city and be done with business in four days."

"But that's not what we're going to do," Conway said. Since the handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in late June, he added, Fallujah "is an Iraqi problem. If there is an attack on the anti-Iraqi forces that inhabit the city, it will be done almost exclusively by Iraqis."

It's not like the city's going anywhere.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 21, 2004 8:43 AM