On Iraq-McCain vs. Hagel

There is an interesting story in today's (Sunday) NYTIMES which compares and contrasts the Iraq war positions of two Republican senators, John McCain and Chuck Hagel. Both senators were veterans of Vietnam, McCain was a naval aviator, Hagel an infantryman .Different Paths From Vietnam to War in Iraq

This hit home with me:

But Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s aide and co-author, said the senator’s year studying the war, his growing up in a military family and his 20 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee shaped his view that “when you go to war, you have to be fully committed to doing everything necessary to win it.”

“He very much believes you make decisions about force levels to support a strategy — and not the other way around,” Mr. Salter said of Mr. McCain, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq but criticized the war’s strategy and execution.

Mr. McCain’s beliefs about the responsibilities of those in command come in part from his sense that civilian and military leaders “failed to speak up when they knew their tactics and strategy were wrong” in Vietnam, Mr. Salter said.

As you may recall, I have expressed my utter contempt for the way the administration conducted the war, irrespective of the fact that the war itself was unnecessary. ( I have often wondered whether getting the country into an unnecessary war fit the "high crimes and misdemeanors" threshold for impeachment delineated in the constitution.)

But where do we go from here? Set a date for withdrawal? Stay and fight? Fight whom? As John Kerry said many years ago, "How can you ask someone to be the last man to die for a lie"?

I think this certainly is a "quagmire" in terms of purposes and means to achieve it . We seem to be careening down a road with no destination in mind and a blind man at the wheel.