100 Years Is a) The Length of the Campaign, b) McCain’s Age, or c) A Moral Obligation

It sure feels like this presidential campaign has been going on for a century, and according to the late night comedians, John McCain was 100 when he gave his first speech in front of the Tower of Babel. 

But the answer, despite what Democrats want to make of a single sound bite, is c., a moral obligation. We have a moral obligation to insure that Iraq returns to its pre-invasion stability and stays there. If that means maintaining an American military presence there for 100 years, as McCain insists (video,) so be it.

When we invaded, we threw Iraq into chaos. If we leave prematurely, as both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have promised to do, Iraq could descend into a Cambodian-style bloodbath, and some of that blood would be on our hands.

A bill sponsored by Obama early last year would have had all US combat brigades out of Iraq by this coming Monday, March 31. In a speech this week, Hillary Clinton mischaracterized McCain’s “100 year” quip four times and said, “my plan is … to remove one to two brigades a month (text.)”

Neither Obama nor Clinton seems to understand the realities on the ground in Iraq; neither seems willing to defy the anti-war sentiments that predominate in the Democratic Party.

To leave Iraq in its current condition, or in any condition we can realistically expect to see in the foreseeable future, would not only be profoundly immoral, but would put us a greater risk of terrorist attack. And at greater risk of skyrocketing oil prices. And at greater risk of a Middle East meltdown. And at greater risk of metastasizing global jihad.

You can oppose the launching and execution of a war and still acknowledge the moral obligations that that war entials.

Newsprism