He defends McCain’s evolving position on Iraq since 2005:
That is certainly one way of looking at it. Another is that the crisis in Iraq looked radically different, and was radically different, in early 2005. Rather than moving in a “neoconservative” direction — neoconservatives were divided, then as now, on the question of a long-term U.S. presence — but in the direction of filling the security vacuum. And filling the security vacuum strikes me as less an ideological notion and more about achieving the objective of a peaceful, stable Iraq. It so happens that McCain rejects the notion, widely held among the actually quite optimistic withdrawalists, that a U.S. withdrawal will lead to political reconciliation.
Filling the security vacuum with US troops not an ideological notion? It’s a commitment to occupying another sovereign country in the middle of a communal civil war in which no other party can thereby fill the vacuum. It’s putting military roots deep into the middle of Muslim Arabia with no guarantee we will ever be able to remove them and no real incentive for the Iraqi parties to ever come to reconciliation as long as the US remains the unconditional guarantor of stability. It’s empire. Or at best, a permanent protectorate.
The Dish 