McCain's Fantasy

Fred Kaplan of Slate reviews the candidates' speeches on Iraq and Afghanistan from yesterday and highlights a disturbing tendency from John McCain.

It's a happy coincidence that Barack Obama and John McCain both gave speeches on Tuesday about Iraq and Afghanistan. The big difference between the two is that Obama views the wars as problems, while McCain pretty much does not. In short, while Obama's analysis has some lapses and holes, at least it is an analysis; McCain's is a bit of a fantasy.

Here's the problem: The U.S. Army is stretched so thin that, according to its own calculations, no extra combat units can be sent to Afghanistan unless the same number of units is pulled out of Iraq. There is no flexibility here. So if McCain wants to put three more brigades in Afghanistan, where is he going to get them?...If McCain wins the White House, the first thing the Joint Chiefs will tell him is that they don't have the resources to fulfill his war aims.

McCain's policies may differ from those of Bush in some areas (global warming, stem cell research, spending) but here he shows a frightening resemblance to Bush: he sees what he wants to see and dismisses credible evidence to the contrary. He dumbs down our political discourse by offering nonsensical proposals that insult the intelligence of the electorate. Faced with this absurdity, at least Kaplan actually digs into the candidates' proposals and evaluates them rather than reporting them in a mindless "he said, she said" manner that fails to separate the wheat from the chaff.