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Vail Daily column: McCain’s battle to kill Americans

Richard Carnes
My View

I do believe it is time for Sen. John McCain to finally fade away into the Arizona desert with all the other warmongers who have worn out their potential worthiness.

Along with his hawkish sidekick sweetheart, Sen. Lindsey Graham, last week they demanded President Obama send 10,000 American troops to fight on the ground against ISIS in Iraq.

Evidently 4,404 dead American soldiers is not enough.



“Ramadi fell because of the president’s failure to leave a residual force behind, which is one of the most shameful acts in recent history,” said McCain, conveniently ignoring the shameful acts a previous administration perpetrated on the American public barely a decade ago, propelling us into this Iraq mess in the first place.

To defeat ISIS he claims would require “more of most everything: More boots on the ground, more forward air controllers, more training, more equipping.”

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He must have forgot to mention the guaranteed loss of more American sons and daughters.

I’m sure it was just a simple oversight.

McCain also called Obama’s decision to withdraw troops years ago “shameful” and said it was the cause of today’s troubles, along with not having a strategy to win in Iraq from the beginning.

He also seems to have forgotten that our troops were withdrawn on the precise deadline that Bush and the Iraqi government had previously agreed upon.

“Now if it’s Shiite militias that come in, it’ll permanently estrange the Sunni population from Baghdad.”

Oh good grief. We certainly would not want anyone to be “permanently estranged,” now would we.

The Shia and Sunni have been killing one another for 1,400 years, so why would a few thousand more dead Americans suddenly make a difference?

“Pro-government troops fled Ramadi as ISIS fighters flooded the city.”

This is the same Ramadi where hundreds of American soldiers were either killed or wounded and we spent a few billion American dollars fighting to secure. The fleeing “pro-government troops” are the same ones we spent a few billion more American dollars to train and equip, and every once in a while they would turn on American soldiers during training to kill a few of us out of frustration or whatever asinine religious-based reason they had.

If the Iraqis are unwilling to defend their own country, why should we defend it? The French happily handed over their “Surrender Trophy” years ago to the Iraqi “Army,” which has broken and run more times than John Boehner. Nobody expects them to hold Baghdad against ISIS, so why waste more American blood attempting to do so?

There was no winning in Iraq to begin with; no “job to finish,” as McCain so often claims. There was, and still is, absolutely nothing to be accomplished by continuing to throw away American lives in Iraq or anywhere in the Middle East.

An oft-used question bears repeating yet once again: Would you want your son or daughter to be the last American to die there?

Anyway, we should just be thankful not to live where gangs of heavily armed crazy people go around waging battles in public places, killing indiscriminately to further some delusional cause.

And that includes Texas, now that I think about it.

Richard Carnes, of Edwards, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.

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