McCain is right: It's the casualties that matter

New Hampshire Union Leader
June 13, 2008

THE DEMOCRATS' knee-jerk opposition to anything that Sen. John McCain says about Iraq would be funny if the consequences weren't so serious.

McCain said on "The Today Show" on Wednesday that getting all troops out of Iraq quickly was not as important as halting casualties there. After all, we have troops in South Korea, Japan and Germany, he noted. But they aren't getting shot at. It's ending the fighting, not ending the deployment, that is most important, he said.

This is so self-evidently true that it shouldn't need defending. McCain wants to end the war in Iraq while acknowledging that some U.S. presence there might be justified for national security purposes for a long time to come. He's said this for a long time now, and it makes perfect sense.

But Democrats said his comments showed that he was out of touch with the American people who want troops to come home. Nonsense.

The American people want the war to end. McCain wants that too. But he's sharp enough to understand that "bring the troops home," used for years as a proxy for "end the war," is not really the same thing. For political reasons, the Democrats are trying to pretend that it is. The American people are smart enough to see through that dishonest trick.