McCain’s mistake about the beginnings of the surge yesterday was slightly embarrassing, but not particularly dreadful. Now he seems intent on making it worse. Today’s edition is just pure nonsense:
“A surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components. … I’m not sure people understand that `surge’ is part of a counterinsurgency.”
McCain said he had been briefed by Col. MacFarland, commander of 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, in December 2006 to discuss the strategy that remains in force today. Bush announced the surge in January 2007 and the first of the new troops began operations in Iraq in early February 2007.
MacFarland, as McCain well knows, had been working on turning the Sunni tribes for months, well before the Surge was even a glimmer in George Bush’s eye. The Anbar Awakening initiative began in October of 2006 (and MacFarland had been working for months before that to convince the Sunnis to switch sides). At the time, General George Casey–whom McCain has rightly skewered–was in charge of MNF-I and he was no fan of counterinsurgency (coin) tactics. If you really want to be technically correct–and who doesn’t?–Petraeus didn’t really begin the implementation of coin tactics in Baghdad until the Joint Security Stations were established in late Spring of 2007. (Remember how people like McCain were saying during the very bloody months of May and June of 2007, “The surge has only just begun.” He was absolutely right about that.)
But he’s wrong now, and trying to b.s. his way through a gaffe. Simple way out: “I misspoke yesterday. The Anbar Awakening was well underway when the surge began.” Pride, though, seems to have the upper hand right now–pride that goeth before, during and after the fall of McCain’s Middle East policies. I’ll have more on these stunning developments in my print column tomorrow.