Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Smearing And Sliming John McCain — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Evidently, there is a campaign focused on taking tiny little snippets of statements John McCain has made and making McCain look utterly cruel and heartless as a result of those snippets. This game must be amusing for about five minutes--seven, tops--but after a while, one wonders what is to be gained by it. Other than misleading the electorate, of course.

The latest would-be kerfuffle involves Democrats howling over McCain supposedly saying that "it's not too important" when American troops come home from Iraq. Problem is that these charges utterly and completely misses the context of the McCain statement:

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said: "The Obama campaign is embarking on a false attack on John McCain to hide their own candidate's willingness to disregard facts on the ground in pursuit of withdrawal no matter what the costs. John McCain was asked if he had a `better estimate' for a timeline for withdrawal.

The exchange that has Democrats licking their chops began when co-host Matt Lauer asked about the surge strategy in Iraq: "If it's working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?"

McCain replied: "No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq, Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That's all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General [David] Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are.

"But the key to it is that we don't want any more Americans in harm's way. That way, they will be safe, and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama's proposal would have done. I'm proud of them. And they're doing a great job. And we are succeeding and it's fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn't realize that."

(Emphasis mine.) As the quote makes clear, McCain's concern is to ensure the safety of the troops--an objective that is far more important than any specific timetable for withdrawal.

Bizarrely and offensively, however, the Obama campaign and its surrogates have decided to try to portray McCain as not caring about the welfare of the troops. This is both entirely inaccurate when one considers the context of the McCain statements and entirely offensive when one considers McCain's wartime heroism and the fact that his life experience alone has caused him to care more about the state of the military and the welfare of the troops than most of his peers in public service. War heroes deserve--if nothing else--the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of issues and McCain's public life has made clear that he takes a backseat to no one in his concern for the troops.

So much for this "New Tone" I keep hearing about. And in a just world, when people think that the only way they can win a Presidential election is by deliberately misconstruing John McCain's statements, it should say more about McCain's would-be critics than it does about him. The actual facts surrounding McCain's comment are crystal clear even if their portrayal by the Obama campaign and its surrogates is not.