Former CFR President Les Gelb Says McCain Speech in "La La Land" Posted by Adam Blickstein

Today, the National Security Network held a conference call responding to John McCain's claim that we will achieve victory in Iraq by 2013. Our experts also questioned other aspects of John McCain's misguided foreign policy approach. Below are a few quotes from the call, and a link to the full audio can be found here:

I think John McCain has been one of the most important voices on national security policy for many years now, so it really surprises me to see him giving speeches like the one today that are almost in "lala" land. These unsupported generalizations and predictions that he would have scoffed at as the old John McCain.  Lets just take a couple of examples, one is what he says about the future Iraq. He says most of the troops will be gone in four years, at that time there will be relative security in the country and that it will be a democracy. But we have no idea how that is to come about. It certainly isn't coming about by the present polices of the Bush administration and the speech gives every indication he'll continue those policies and so it's kind of a wild eyed, unsupported prediction.
-Les Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations

I don't think McCain has an understanding of what a counterinsurgency is all about...To project that there will be substantially reduced violence in Iraq and that Iraq will be a functioning democracy sounds almost like a campaign promise. For the troops that means a indefinite extension of the substantial deployments in a country where they are seen as occupiers...I am very disappointed Sen. McCain would make these kind of projections, which are fantasies, without giving any hint of how he plans to achieve them.
-General Robert G. Gard (RET)

When it comes to Iraq I think he's lost his perspective right from the beginning. If you go back and look at his statements back in 2003, before the war, and predictions all throughout 2003 that it was going well and would end shortly and then each year he seemed to be telling us it would end very very quickly...But now what he is saying it will end in four years. Even if that were to be true, he's not shown us how you could get there, that will have meant the United States be there for 10 years.
Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Comments

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[peace]

John McCain appears to be myopic in his foreign policy. Since the early nineties, McCain has abandoned his realism and has embraced neoconservatism. The reason for this change has to due with the fact that he thought all wars were like the first Gulf War and the United States only has to rely upon military might alone and does not have be in a military coalition. Also McCain also seems to think that the European leaders would act just like their counterparts in the nineties and be a part of his League of Democracies. But what McCain has not realized is how badly America's image has been tarnished due to the invasion of Iraq, that pratically no nations would sign on to his proposed league.

[Maj MacNaughton]

The above comments are off base and politically motivated. McCain has shown how you are to "get there" in Iraq. He has been one of the very few in national leadership who did so, by his responsible advocacy of sufficient troops early on in the conflict, and then advocacy of the counterinsurgent surge. His position papers show he knew what a counter-insurgency was, and advocated it, before it was implemented. The Ohio speech was an important admission on the part of McCain that he was not going to, contrary to the rediculous Democratic charges, promote war for its own sake in perpetuity. He was signalling his departure from the purile mistakes of Dubya-Cheney-Rumsfeld. It is not correct to say that McCain has been bowled over by the Neocons. He has probably more Realists at his table than any others, from Henry Kissinger on down. Even Robert Kagan has increasingly shown himself far more the Realist, like in his recent interview with Charlie Rose, for example. I don't think democrats show much courage when they wish to score partisan points more than genuine appreciation for a healthier turn of direction at the prospective helm of Republican and presidential leadership.

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To Maj MacNaughton

Have you notice that McCain has the exact same "we dont negotiate stance" as the Bush administration when dealing with Iran. Also in regards to Iraq, McCain has not come up with any ways on how to find a political solution in Iraq which also include Iraq's neighbors in the region including Iran. You and McCain seem to ignore that wars must have some political ends and that the "success," of the surge means nothing if a viable settlement invovling the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds is not resolved.

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The above comments are off base and politically motivated. McCain has shown how you are to "get there" in Iraq. He has been one of the very few in national leadership who did so, by his responsible advocacy of sufficient troops early on in the conflict, and then advocacy of the counterinsurgent surge. His position papers show he knew what a counter-insurgency was, and advocated it, before it was implemented. The Ohio speech was an important admission on the part of McCain that he was not going to, contrary to the rediculous Democratic charges, promote war for its own sake in perpetuity. He was signalling his departure from the purile mistakes of Dubya-Cheney-Rumsfeld. It is not correct to say that McCain has been bowled over by the Neocons. He has probably more Realists at his table than any others, from Henry Kissinger on down
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