Clueless

By Ron Beasley

It's really too bad that Iraq is not more in the news.  It's become obvious to anyone paying attention that the al-Maliki government is now taking it's orders not from Washington DC but from Tehran.  The most obvious example is the lack of a status of forces agreement.  The majority of the Iraqis want the US out of their country sooner rather than later.  Joe Conason explains that John McCain is just as clueless about the situation in Iraq as he is on what to do about the economy.

The absence of headlines has allowed John McCain to pretend that his insistence on maintaining the American occupation until "victory" is still relevant.

But despite McCain's claim to greater experience and judgment in foreign policy, he just doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. If he did, the latest developments in relations between Baghdad and Washington would dampen the Republican nominee's enthusiasm for a prolonged occupation.

Negotiations between the Bush administration and the government of Nouri al-Maliki over the presence of U.S. forces have reached an impasse that no longer seems certain to be resolved until George W. Bush has left office. If any resolution is achieved over the coming weeks, moreover, it will render McCain's hard-line position on the war null and void.

Bush administration folds but not John McCain:

But having presented the Iraqis with a draft treaty last spring that would have permitted an indefinite occupation, the White House has folded so completely and so often during the course of the ensuing negotiations that such warnings have little credibility.

Meanwhile the Iraqis are obviously well aware that Bush has forfeited his influence at home and abroad and will be leaving office at the end of January anyway. Their latest proposal is to ask the United Nations to "extend" the coalition mandate for one more year, allowing the Iraqis to enter talks with the incoming administration.

So much for the fantasies of the neoconservatives, who once imagined the new Iraq as a permanent base for American troops in the Middle East, with a client government that would reflect U.S. priorities. What has come to exist instead is an Iraq much closer to Iran than to the United States, one that will countenance no permanent U.S. bases and prefers that our troops depart sooner rather than later.

Yet McCain still seems to believe that we will be able to have a "conditions-based" agreement with the Iraqis that allows the withdrawal of our troops according to the judgment of American commanders and the president. Someone should try to bring him back to reality, and soon — just in case he wins this election.

So John McCain is supposed to have all the foreign policy experience but he doesn't have a clue as to what's going on.  Sorry John, the war is over and as many of us predicted from the beginning the winner is Iran.