The new conventional wisdom is that the surge has worked, that Iraq is entering a period of calm and that voters are less concerned about the war than they have been — which would then make John McCain a strong candidate in the fall.
The conventional wisdom, as usual, has some flaws, as Juan Cole points out. Here are a couple of excerpts from today’s post on his blog:
Ambassador Marc Ginsburg is astonished that John McCain could win in Florida on a platform of a Hundred Years War in Iraq and phony slogans about “victory” that McCain is careful never to define. In my view, McCain’s mantra about “victory” in Iraq is the 2008 equivalent of Nixon having a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War in 1968. Somebody should please ask McCain what “victory” would look like exactly and how he would get there. Intensively patrolling some neighborhoods and cutting them off from traffic with blast walls are not measures that can be kept up for very long. Then what? Besides, someone please do me a favor and actually read the list of bombings and killings appended at the end of this post, occuring in downtown Baghdad and elsewhere, and tell me why John McCain thinks things are just hunky dory there. Is it a racist thing where it doesn’t matter how many Iraqis are killed as long as US troops aren’t? Even then, 5 US troops were blown up on Monday. Yeah, that’s real calm.
….
A new poll finds that the percentage of Americans who think the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein was worth it to the US declined from 35% to only 32% between December and January. The percentage who thought it was not worth it rose from 56% to 59% according to the same poll. It turns out that the American public is not impressed with a mere reduction in violence nowadays from apocalyptic levels last year this time. They want to know why we went there in the first place, and why their sacrifice of blood and treasure was worthwhile. No one, including McCain really has an answer for that.
Iraq, however, is just not that important. Go figure.
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Hank Kalet 
\”The Left often discover a sudden enthusiasm for the previous war once a new one\’s come along. Since Iraq, they\’ve been all in favor of Afghanistan, though back in the fall of 2001 they were convinced it was a quagmire, graveyard of empire, unwinnable, another Vietnam, etc. Oh, and they also discovered a belated enthusiasm for the first President Bush\’s shrewd conduct of the 1991 Gulf War, though at the time Senator Kerry and most other Democrats voted against that one, too.\” ~ Mark Steyn
The war in Afghanistan had wide support. Most Democrats voted for the war in Afghanistan. And horror of horrors, even the dreaded lefty French and Canadians have been helping us out in Afghanistan. Looks like a lot of Rightwangers are fairly upset with the quagmire in Iraq; just look at the popularity of Rightwanger, Ron Paul.
Who\’s Ron Paul?Is he the guy who has has drawn the enthusiastic support of an assortment of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 \”Truthers\” and other conspiracy nuts?I don\’t know much about him …. but I\’m fairly sure he does not have wide support among conservatives.Oh, and regarding Afghanistan, quagmire, etc. etc. …. some background:[Bombing of the Taliban commenced on Oct 7, 2001; we took Mazar-e-Sharif on Nov. 9, 2001; Khandahar fell on Dec 6, 2001, and the new Afghan government was sworn in on Dec, 21, 2001.]\”Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not, given the scars scoured into the national psyche by defeat in Southeast Asia. For all the differences between the two conflicts, and there are many, echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable.\” — R.W. Apple, New York Times, Oct 31, 2001 \”The administration has bungled the challenge. … The war effort is in deep trouble. The United States is not headed into a quagmire; it\’s already in one. The U.S. is not losing the first round against the Taliban; it has already lost it.\” — Jacob Heilbrunn, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 4, 2001 \”The U.S. road out of the quagmire in Central Asia ultimately passes through the U.N.\” — James Hoagland in the Washington Post, Oct 24, 2001 \”The idea of an expanding U.S. commitment, however, is precisely what raises the specter of quagmire for critics, raising ghosts of Vietnam. The Taliban plainly are unlikely to be destroyed from the air, but Afghanistan is a wild and untamable land, and there is little reason to believe that U.S. ground troops would have greater success in subduing it than the Soviets had.\” — Tony Karon – Time Magazine, Oct 31, 2001 \”Americans must face a hard reality: massive military force is not a winning weapon against these enemies. It makes the problem worse. In contrast, a strategy that emphasizes clever diplomacy, intelligence-gathering, and carefully selected military strikes might produce success eventually if we pursue it with patience and tenacity.\” – John J. Mearshimer, NYT, Nov 4, 2001 Discuss.