Matt Yglesias

35 Responses to “Winning”

1. Don Williams Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 9:34 am

   1) SOmeone ought to ask McCain what the hell “winning” is — the loss of more American lives for the sake of Big Oil’s investments? But to confront McCain, that someone would need a spine — which evidently rules out Obama and our Democratic leadership.

   2) So instead ask McCain why the US troops have given more money in support of the Obama campaign than they have donated to McCain. Why is that — if the troops truly think McCain speaks for them?

   Recall that any soldier who actually stepped up and said Bush is a two-faced liar who has killed 4000 soldiers for Big Oil would be immediately court-martialed and sent to Levenworth.

   3) McCain is comfortable lying about the views of the troops because he knows they dare not contradict him.

2. El Cid Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 9:48 am

   Look, winning means victory, and victory means supporting The Surge (TM), and those terms are 100% interchangeable and real patriots like it that way.

3. cleek Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 9:51 am

   doesn’t matter what it means. nobody but egghead pundits care. everybody else knows that McCain knows how to win wars, knows it in his fucking bones.

   don’t mess with The Honorable POW, John “Maverick” McCain; he’ll draw a cross on your spleen, appeaser.

4. Dee Dee Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 9:58 am

   Its fairly simple…President Obama withdrawing the troops at the request of the Iraq government, in a responsible manner = surrender. President McCain declaring that we’ve won the war and withdrawing in a responsible manner = victory.

5. neb Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 10:22 am

   Saddam Hussein was defeated in 2003. We won the “war” along time ago. We now need to leave. McCain himself said we won the war back in 2003, just as President Bush also said in his “mission accomplished” speech. The fact is that military leaders and Iraqi officials are more closely aligned with Obama’s policies, and that McCain wants to stick around in Iraq for no particular reason other than “winning,” which we’ve already done.

6. Davis X. Machina Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 10:23 am

   “Winning” means a Republican President, and GOP majorities in both Houses.

   Iraq — it’s not a war, it’s the world’s most expensive campaign commercial.

7. Luke Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 10:25 am

   having won the presidential election=winning in Iraq

   Note that “winning in Iraq” is an ongoing state defined by a single event. As long as we have a Republican president, we will keep winning. If we have a Democratic president, we will have lost.

   What’s ironic (in a hang-yourself kind of way) is that, once Obama wins, the Republicans will start saying that we’ve lost the war. To the degree that it was a war without a mission, “winning” or “losing” is completely psychological; we’ve lost the war if the American people think that we lost the war.

   So, in short, the Republicans will lose the war to win an election.

8. tinisoli Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 10:29 am

   “We are winning, and we will win.” – President Bush, August 2004

   “We’re gonna win the right way, by winning!” – McCain, August 2008

   Oh the inanity.

9. fletc3her Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 11:07 am

   The Republicans are fond of redefining words. In this case they have redefined “win” to mean the state of Iraq just before a Republican President starts a pull out. In contrast a “defeat” is the state of Iraq just before a Democratic President starts a pull out.

   Neither has anything to do with the conditions on the ground, the state of our military, the state of the Iraqi military, the political situation in Iraq, the availability of electricity and fuel in Baghdad, etc. Though, I think some consideration might be given to the state of oil contracts with the multinationals.

10. Roddy McCorley Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 11:32 am

    Iraq — it’s not a war, it’s the world’s most expensive campaign commercial.

    Amen to that. Here’s an alternative view, from Matt Taibbi:

    Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein’s Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient.

    A campaign commercial – sure. A feint while the neocons go after their real target – sure. Ironically, we launched a war in Iraq for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. When has that ever happened in the recorded history of this sorry species? Wars have been launched based on misdirection. But never has a war been launched as misdirection.

11. David B. Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    Off topic — but President Obama’s gonna have some deep problems with Petraeus. Do you fire him outright? Or put him in charge of the withdrawal, so he either resigns to run in 2012 or is the general who–in the McCain formulation–loses. At minimum, Petraeus is tacitly encouraging the use of himself as a symbol by the right. It’s not that the uniformed brass are never political, but they shouldn’t be so tacky about it.

12. bab23 Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Winning means 270+ for republicans in November.

13. Matthew Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    We’ve gone over this a thousand time now. Winning is staying, leaving is losing. Until such a time as Republicans decide that leaving is winning, at which time we are memory wiped so the cognitive dissonance doesn’t actually explode our fragile brains.

    These Bastards

14. dbreger Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    exactly. i think this is going to play out very strongly in the debates. unless you’re arguing for permanent bases (and even mccain knows better than to argue that even if he desires it) you are going to leave with some level of insurgency, some level of iraqi military competence and a central government that will be somewhere between vanishing and enduring, between ethical and corrupt, between liberal and repressive; there are any number of parameters that will be imperfectly achieved. if you force mccain into defending a military presence until the last insurgent has died or handed in his gun, he’s going to sound like an idiot. if you compel him to acknowledge that we’re going to accept less than the absolute, you need to ask him, “why not now?”

15. j swift Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    what does “winning” mean to McCain in the context of Iraq?

    Whatever McCain thinks will get his ass planted in the Oval Office.

16. BJC Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    This is the same mantra that was used – is still used by some – about Vietnam. “We had them on the run, but they wouldn’t let us win.” Fill in the blank as to who “they” were – hippies, Congress, anti-war protesters, liberal media, whatever. McCain’s not fighting the last war – he’s fighting the last war he was in. Regardless, I am willing to believe there are people serving in Iraq who say this as well. That does not make it sound policy.

17. kidkostar Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    Someone should also ask McCain if he really thinks that the majority of our servicemen and women want to “win” in Iraq with him as CNC following his strategy, then why are they donating the majority of their money to Obama?

18. ibid Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    The other problem here is that McCain suggests his Iraq policy is in part based on what the troops want. Perhaps this isn’t a politically viable thing to say, but what the troops want isn’t the same as what’s best for the country. If they told him that they were tired and wanted out (which a substantial proportion probably do), would he have to withdraw even though we are winning? Similarly, many are probably excited by a concept of “winning” that bears very little relationship to our strategic goals. Should we perpetually antagonize the Middle East (and most of the rest of the world) just so that the troops can come home with the satisfaction of having “won”? If Barack Obama doesn’t listen to the troops on the ground when making foreign policy decisions, that is a good thing.

19. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    The amusing fact is that “the troops” don’t know what winning is or how to do it, either – other than killing everyone in Iraq outside the Green Zone.

    Why anybody would listen to the grunts on the ground, who by definition are putting themselves in harms way in ways they don’t comprehend on orders from people they don’t know based on intelligence they can’t evaluate for purposes they don’t know – to paraphrase “Blazing Saddles”, “You know – morons!”, is beyond me.

    But where Matt is stupid is that it’s wrong to treat this kind of thing as a serious discussion. It’s bullshit from word one – and McCain should be attacked on that basis, not on some notion that McCain actually might HAVE some coherent concept of “winning”. By definition, he doesn’t – and this should be the point, not asking for clarifications you’ll never get.

20. kerry miller Says:
    August 21st, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Why is it so apparently inconceivable that “winning” means a democratic Iraq? A democracy with an Islamist face and a democracy in which many more battles will have to be fought (just as when democracy first emerged in the West, it was followed by protracted struggles for women’s rights, against racism for the right to unionise and so on).

    I don’t think anything other than a relatively stable but emerging democracy in Iraq is in US interests in the 21st century. The US troops will withdraw (and the Iraqi government will insist on it) as soon as this happens. And current developments suggest that this is exactly what we are seeing.

21. Chad Anderson Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.

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