Only ten more Friedman Units?

By Ron Beasley

Michael Yon and Michael Totten think victory is at hand in Iraq as does John McCain.  That includes my local right leaning newspaper, the Oregonian.  In an editorial, A third Bush term, or something better? , they praise John McCain for a more "realistic" approach:

The Arizona senator has come a considerable distance from the January day he told a New Hampshire audience that U.S. troops could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" and that "would be fine with me." Even if his meaning was widely misunderstood, his remark hinted at the same blithe recklessness that has characterized the current president's management of the war. In his speech Thursday, McCain showed a greater sense of responsibility.

but seem to still be questioning his "realism":

His vision of an almost-complete troop withdrawal within five years seems to rely on more of the same of what the United States has struggled to achieve for the past 16 months. In other words, he seems to be calling for keeping lots of Americans in scattered positions, counting on a sharp improvement in the quality of Iraqi security forces, keeping neighborhoods divided by blast walls and expecting Iraq's central government to gain strength and a sense of purpose.

If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the same thing that George W. Bush has been saying for years. The difference is that McCain thinks that within five years, the sectarian militias in Iraq will be disbanded, al-Qaida will have been chased out of Iraq and the central government will be capable of "imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders."

The course of events so far in Iraq, though, offers little promise that an extension of current war policy will result in such a rosy outcome, even after 10 years of war. McCain has much to do to convince Americans that rotating war-weary troops repeatedly into a violent country will make the world a better place.

Even if McCain is elected the US involvement in Iraq will be winding down or ending in 2009.  Even the Republicans know we can't afford ten more Friedman units and that the American people won't stand for another five more years.