Wanted to add a quote from that exchange with McCain that didn’t get captured on video. Responded to Ramesh’s question about staying in Iraq for “a hundred years,” he said, we’d stay there as long as needed, whether that’s [exact quote here] “one hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change.”
His campaign insists that the reason he becomes so hyperbolic is to hammer home the point that our time in Iraq will stop being a controversy once the killing stops. Sure, he’s right about that — and that’s why he mentions Japan, Germany and Kuwait when rebuffing criticism. (Though it’s also a weirdly obvious conclusion: Other than the killings, America, how did you like the play?) What frustrated me yesterday was his refusal to engage on what it would take to make the transition from an occupying force in a country torn by civil war to something less intrusive… and also to address the mixed feelings that Iraqis greet the prospect of perpetual American presence.
Not that anyone wants to talk about Iraq in depth right now. I don’t have the depth of Karen’s experience, but I can say that, even on the Iraq war, people are responding to candidates personally, not politically. I’ve even heard people who say they are torn between Obama and McCain* all but dismiss the huge disparity on the two candidates when it comes to the war, saying that “someone who’s not contaminated by the process” is a more important factor.
*They do exist and I’m supposed to be finishing that story right now, instead of blogging….