Tokyo; and Cambridge, Mass. - John McCain has set off a firestorm by suggesting that the timing of the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is "not too important." What is important, he said, are the casualties in Iraq, pointing to long-term US troop presence in Japan, South Korea, and Germany. He should be commended for his "straight talk" in articulating what he believes, despite its unpopularity.
But Senator McCain has yet to give the American people clear answers to three fundamental questions: What, exactly, are the political objectives of keeping large numbers of American soldiers in Iraq for years to come? What plausible outcome would benefit the United States enough to justify the wrenching costs of achieving those objectives? And what, concretely, is the strategy for getting there?
McCain may genuinely believe there is still a political objective, albeit a far more modest one than President Bush and the war's supporters originally articulated, that can justify the sacrifice of still more American lives and treasure. But if he can't do better than slogans such as "winning" and "stability," it's hard to avoid the conclusion that such an objective simply doesn't exist. And in that case, we can add one more exorbitant cost to the war's bill: the death of strategy.
What outcome can justify the costs of fighting on?
For the rest of The Christian Science Monitor article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0617/p09s02-coop.html