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The Truth About the Truth
By David Glenn Cox
The Straight Talk Express has derailed again. It seems that every time it gets up a head of steam it finds itself derailed, either by bad joints, rotten ties or poor rail alignment, but the real problem is a poor roadbed. Every time the McCain train intersects with the truth the train comes off the track. With Senator McCain’s now famous, “No, but that's not too important” comment, the Senator claims that he was being taken out of context. Just as he was taken out of context with his “ Stay in Iraq for 100 years” comment.
His adherents have rushed to his defense to build a bridge between what he said and what he means. I personally believe that what the Senator said was Freudently telling; McCain is a man famous for his short temper and the question asked was about his timetable for bringing the troops home. The question has been asked before and is the original source of the “100 years” comment. It’s the question that riles him, not the answer; he was angered by being asked again. Like a mother asking a petulant child, “Have you cleaned your room like I asked you?”
He stomps his foot and says, “No, but that's not too important.” This whole issue is about his wants and his desires. Like the business executive at the service desk in the Lexus dealership shouting, “I want my car fixed right now!” To him nothing else matters, he wants his car and it doesn’t matter to him what time it is or if the mechanic has to stay late. All that matters is what the busy executive wants; other's wishes, needs or desires mean nothing to him. This is telling in McCain, because while he says one thing he means the other. The Straight Talk Express conductor's job then is to protect him from telling the truth!
When McCain says victory in Iraq, he means absolute control of Iraq, the absence of resistance to American will. Our originally stated goal in Iraq was to topple Saddam, mission accomplished. Then the stated mission became setting up democracy, which of course is nothing but a quisling client state. Then the rooting out of Al Queda and the make-believe terrorists became job one. The surge is working, according to John McCain, as we’ve only lost fourteen service people so far this month.
“The generals spat as the lines on the map they moved from side to side.” (Roger Waters)
You see, to John the Dim our service people matter but not as much as the goal of dominating Iraq. While the reasons for the war can be mutated at will, the goal line for success is immovable. So the strategy for the Straight Talk Express is to tell part of the truth and by a circuitous route. From the very beginning McCain asserts unequivocally that the surge is working, yet he becomes angry when asked if it’s working then why can’t we bring our people home. What he means is the surge is working like a levee, it’s holding the waters back but it won’t solve the flood.
Hence the “100 years” or “It really doesn’t matter,” because that’s the truth as far as John McCain sees it. McCain finished at the bottom of his class at Annapolis and maybe he was out the day they discussed Sun Tzu and his military dictates on waging war. Sun Tzu said:
1. In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
According to master Sun then, the surge holding back the flood is a loss, not a victory. Breaking even is not victory, breaking even is a loss, an expensive loss. While the Iraqis are able to hide amongst the populace and gather strength and intelligence, the US military cannot. The military is forced to defend outposts and forts from an enemy that has free rein to pick and choose the time and place of the battle. To destroy a million-dollar tank with an old artillery shell or a Humvee full of soldiers with a homemade land mine. This, in John McCain's estimation, is “working.”
But John the Dim on the roundabout to the truth forgets that the war was based on lies and deceptions. Or more to the point he hopes that we forget. He wants to hold up grand, noble illusions of victory, of VE day and VJ day and the parade that he never got. This is personal to him, he is re-fighting his own war, the same way and with the same oblivion and disregard of the facts on the ground as a generation before. He is sewing us his silk purse from a sow’s ear.
It’s not so much that McCain is a liar. Bush is a liar, McCain is lost, living in a dream world. When confronted by his mis-statements he continues to defend them as if we can be convinced that the video is somehow wrong. If McCain refuses to accept his own mistakes about such trivialities as mis-statements, how then will he handle mistakes as commander in chief? Like a choleric old man ready to argue about the temperature of his oatmeal or where he left his watch?
He's fighting his own war from inside his own mind, where a 100 years really doesn’t matter to him. He is the medal-bedecked general determined to show the world how the Vietnam, I mean the Iraq war should have been fought once and for all. Fighting the wrong war for the wrong reasons, ignoring all the dictates of military stratagem, he devolves into tragic Rufus T. Firefly singing Onward Freedonia! He's a farce, a delusional old war horse who, smelling gun powder, stomps his feet and demands to have his own way. Like a spoiled child, he lives in the reality of only what he wants matters.
So, when you look at it from that context, McCain is absolutely correct, it really doesn’t matter. “No, but that's not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq, Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are.
“But the key to it is that we don't want any more Americans in harm's way. That way, they will be safe, and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama's proposal would have done. I’m proud of them. And they're doing a great job. And we are succeeding and it's fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn't realize that.”
The first paragraph argues with the second as McCain compares apples to oranges. We will bring our troops home as soon as we can though it will probably be more like fifty years. The caboose on the Straight Talk Express waves to the engineer as they pass on the horseshoe bend of twisted reality. Or in the words of master Sun:
10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.
14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their income will be dissipated; while government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantles, draught-oxen and heavy wagons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.
Current military expenditures are 36% of the Federal budget; when including the VA and debt from military programs, add an additional 18%.
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