Say Anything Blog

There are no bad guys in Iraq?  That’s going to shock the hell out of our troops who are getting shot at and bombed over there even now.

“If John (McCain) wants to know where the bad guys live, come back with me to Afghanistan. We know where they reside. And it’s not in Iraq.”

Dean Barnett responds:

I have a suggestion for the senator: Perhaps he could bring his newly benign assessment to our soldiers who are serving in Iraq and the veterans who have served there. It would surely come as a huge relief to our soldiers currently in Iraq that their work has suddenly become “bad guy free.” Perhaps Biden should also share his crass bad-guy-appraisal with all of the Iraqis who have stood by us and who, like our soldiers, have given and still are giving so much for that nation’s freedom.

We all understand that the Democrats have pivoted from Iraq-is-a-quagmire to Iraq-is-over, the better to pretend that Afghanistan has become their foreign policy obsession. Politics necessitates certain idiocies at times, and we are cognizant of this. But it would be nice if Senator Biden could perform his surrogate duties while maintaining an appropriate respect for our soldiers in Iraq and our Iraqi allies who continue to pursue a very dangerous line of work.

On a related note, the sudden shift in Democrat rhetoric to Afghanistan has got to be one of the most contrived bits of political maneuvering I’ve ever witnessed.  For almost the entire five years of the Iraq war we’ve heard nary of peep out of the Democrats about Afghanistan, but now suddenly their defeatism on Iraq has run into the cold brick wall of success and they want to talk about the other war.

Iraq is no good to them any more as a campaign issue, so now they’ll try on Afghanistan as a talking point and see how that one fits.

It’s crass.  It’s cynical.  And it has little to do with leadership and sound policy and a whole lot to do with a raw thirst for power.