By Staff
John McCain insists his Senate colleague Barack Obama, the two presidential nominees, make a joint visit to Iraq.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton hit it on the head: "John McCain's proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don't need any more 'Mission Accomplished' banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don't want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer."
Obama has been to Iraq once, in 2006, for a two-day tour of the country. One can argue about the value of seeing the situation on the ground with one's own eyes.
But Michigan Republicans even asserted last week that "someone who would meet unconditionally, one-on-one, face-to-face, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (of Iran) really ought to meet at least once one-on-one with Gen. David Petraeus."
When you rely on a tour guide to show you around, they decide what you see – or what you don't.
Obama's tour guides would be military officers or diplomats who have a vested interest in showing him good news.
By necessity, they could only travel to secure locations.
Just the reality of where they can go would skew such a meeting away from unvarnished truth toward giving an ear to Iraq factions who want the U.S. to stay rather than those who want Americans dead.
A fact-finding trip to Iraq would be heavily scripted and biased against ordinary Iraqis whose political views are uncertain.
With cameras rolling, how high are the chances Gen. David Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker is going to contradict the administration and embarrass the boss or McCain, who shares George W. Bush's views?
Maybe security improvements on the ground in Baghdad are substantive, but the war is a complex situation that is likely not best grasped on a whirlwind tour.
McCain thinks winning in Iraq is the be all and end all of our foreign policy and is willing to bet billions more and further strain on our already overextended military to prove his point.
It's interesting that McCain insists on visiting Iraq rather than, say, Afghanistan, where America's war against al-Qaeda took a backseat to Baghdad in terms of troops and attention.
Keeping a safe distance is one reason Obama became an early critic of the war.
He was still in Chicago when Washington Democrats were being cajoled into supporting the invasion of Iraq more than five years ago.