According to the New York Times, John McCain and other members of a congressional delegation recently took a walk through a Baghdad Market, browsing, drinking tea, haggling with the merchants, and getting their shopping done. Afterwards, all smiles, they reported that great progress was being made in Iraq. It was now safe to shop.
Mike Pence, a Republican from that centre of cosmopolitan diversity, Indiana, reported that it was just like taking a walk through a market down home. Of course, in Republican America, eventually he will be right.
What they did not report to the media was that they were accompanied by 100 American soldiers in Humvees, sharpshooters, attack helicopters, and bullet-proof vests. They didn’t report that traffic had been diverted away from the area for their visit, and access to the delegation by Iraqi citizens restricted.
The merchants themselves, after hearing McCain’s comments, were incredulous. They thought he was out of his mind. They reported that they were being driven out of business by the failure of the Americans to provide security.
This is more than just an interesting anecdote. Bush accuses congress of sabotaging the Iraq project by linking funding to a time-line for American withdrawal. Congress says, we don’t see that there is any progress. Rather than stay for another five or ten years and another 3,000 American lives, let’s get out now.
McCain supports Bush on this issue. It is rather striking that, in his search for some symbolic act of confidence, to show that there is real progress in Iraq, the only thing he could hit upon was this– a exercise in fakery and deception. This is a supporter of the war, remember. He wants us to believe things are getting better– there is progress.
McCain has also announced that he will copy George Bush’s campaign fund-raising strategy of lavishing side-splittingly hilarious adolescent nicknames upon donors of especially large amounts of cash. They will be called-…. wait for it… the McCain 100’s or McCain 200’s.
Doesn’t quite have the pizzazz of “ranger” or “most honored and lavishly-sucked-up-to-crony now, does it?” No wonder he is beginning to trail… wait for it… Mitt Romney! Yes, the only Republican candidate who has never cheated on his wife! The Mormon! Could it be that the fundamentalist wing of the party, that cohort that still thinks, given enough time, Iraqi’s will be lining up for macjobs at local fast-food outlets, has finally spoken?
It is very, very sad to see a man like McCain, who once seemed like such a promising alternative to all of the sold-out, compromised politicians of both parties, go down in flames.
Like Colin Powell, he has learned that it almost impossible to be honorable and a Republican.
Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get down on your knees behind someone like Dick Cheney and in front of someone like Jerry Falwell or James Dobson– those apostles of intolerance.