First thing's first, all Republicans must use catch phrases on their Sunday show appearances. Senator McCain is no exception. When Gloria Borger asked him to back up his claims that boots on the ground would prevent future lone wolf attacks, he proceeds to essentially ignore the question and spout out the talking points.
"We have no strategy." "We have no coherent strategy," "... the result of leading from behind." Aah yes, of course! It's the feckless president leading from behind, AGAIN. I wonder if his buddy Lindsey Graham were president, he'd say the same thing?
Naturally, McCain allows the Bush Administration to evade blame and puts the culpability squarely on who else-- President Obama.
This is the same organization these people are trained from that the president of the United States said Yemen and Somalia were success stories. We made - when we didn't leave a residual, a sustaining force behind in Iraq, and when the president turned down the advice of his head national security advisers not to arm the Free Syrian Army, and a number of other decisions, that laid the groundwork for ISIS.
Gloria asks John,
Well, you are - you are calling for a coherent strategy to combat this global terrorist movement, which we're clearly witnessing.
But what would that be? Would that be more boots in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen? How - what would that coherent strategy look like, Senator?
Once again, he forgets he was pretty cozy with Syrians who had very questionable ties. You'd think at this point he'd remember not to put his foot in his mouth again, but what does he do?
Well, first of all, it would require some - some boots on the ground, not like the - before. But we certainly need forward air controllers. We haven't been able to drive ISIS out of a town called Kobani using the full weight or using American airpower for several months now. We lost - we lost 86 brave Americans and 400 wounded to take Fallujah. That's one-tenth the size of Mosul. ISIS right now is winning. And we need to go after them, and we need to have more boots on the ground. We need to understand that Syria and Iraq are the same. We need to arm the Free Syrian Army. We need a no-fly zone, which many of us have been calling for, for years, and a coherent strategy that can be presented to the Congress, because they're going to be wanting an authorization for the use of military force.
He makes the association with Fallujah because George W. Bush was then president and every act of a Republican is militarily superior to a Democrat, no matter what the facts are. Did you catch his undying adulation for the Free Syrian Army? Wasn't the whole problem with attacking Syria, the confusion as to who really is Assad's opposition? Nah. Let's just put more Americans in direct line-of-fire and collect our check from weapons contractors. It's just another great idea from the man who unleashed Screech Palin on the nation.
Did boots on the ground in Iraq prevent future terrorist acts? Not likely, but no one can say for certain, we've seen many attacks since our invasion of Iraq. These boots sure as hell didn't do a damned thing for Americans and their "Exceptionalism." Terror will exist, no matter how many boots are on the ground. It's apparent there is NO correlation between an occupation-like presence and the potential for lone wolves to enact their terror on innocent people, but shhh, don't tell Johnny.
