McCain on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Things Even Imus Wouldn't Do

Imus began his chat with old pal Senator John McCain today by congratulating, of all people, President Barack Obama on his success in Iraq. To which McCain, laughing, replied, “You can’t make it up, can you?”

McCain, a Republican Senator from Arizona and a 2008 Presidential hopeful, told Imus he was particularly entertained by Obama taking credit yesterday for a strategy—the troop surge in Iraq—that he had vociferously opposed at the time of its inception.

“So he announced the success of it, and was so small-minded that he couldn’t even give a moment’s credit to George Bush, who was responsible for the surge at the time, in the face of overwhelming opposition from the American public,” said McCain.

Which is not to say that the current situation in Iraq is perfect. “Things are still tough in Iraq,” McCain acknowledged. “But…Iraq will never again be a place where Saddam Hussein can plot to build weapons of mass destruction and attack the United States of America.”

The goal there now, in McCain’s view, is to “get a government functioning, and finish this off.” He called Obama taking credit for a “new strategy” in Iraq “beyond bizarre.”

In fact, making such an outrageous claim is even below the most famous frontrunner of them all. “That’s not even something I would do,” Imus noted.

As for the relatively less happy situation in Afghanistan, McCain believes the strategy there can also succeed, as long as Obama abandons his plan to withdraw U.S. troops next summer regardless of the situation on the ground.

Doing so, said McCain, would diminish the chances for victory because “you sound an uncertain trumpet, and the people in the region start accommodating.” In fact, a police chief in Kandahar recently told McCain, “The Taliban tell us you’re leaving, and when you leave, they’re going to cut off our heads.”

Obama is making a “serious mistake,” in his view, by not saying that a drawdown of U.S. troops will be conditions-based. “He continues to equivocate, and that, to me, leads to the unnecessary risk of American lives,” said McCain.

He tried to quell Imus’s concerns that no new strategy or troop surge will ever work in Afghanistan by pointing to, of all places, Iraq. “It’s still bloody, and they still have a gridlocked government, and that’s bad,” McCain said. “But no longer do we have to worry about Al-Qaeda or sectarian violence.”

Under the right strategy, McCain predicted American troops could get the situation under control in Afghanistan in one or two years. “We’ll have some residual troops, but the point is not the troops,” he told Imus. The point is that the remaining troops would no longer be in imminent danger.

McCain has faced a tough primary battle from the fat former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth, but he feels confident he’ll wrap up the nomination in the August 24 primary.

“I hope you win the election,” Imus said. “And I hope you’re right about Iraq and Afghanistan.”

-Julie Kanfer