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Voting Voices: Raising McCain
Topics: Voting Voices, John McCain, Bakersfield College, Bakotopia, April, 2008, Presidential Debate
Posted by Bakontributor Mon Apr 14, 2008 17:44:49 PDT
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Voting Voices:
Raising McCain
Opposing sides face off at the Battle of Bakersfield College!





Round 1: McCain beats Obama over Iraq, yo!

By Michael Korcok, Bakersfield College

I will likely vote for John McCain in November. One of the more important reasons is that McCain is right about Iraq and Obama is not.

John McCain’s position has been consistent and straightforward: the U.S. is in it to win it. John McCain has pledged to keep a U.S. presence, both military and otherwise, that is sufficient to ensure that Iraq does not collapse into a failed state. He has, furthermore, taken the position that it is military leaders on the ground who should decide the level of presence necessary to ensure that goal. I have no reason to believe that John McCain is playing political games - he staked his political career on the success of the surge when almost no one else thought it could work.

If we leave before there is a measure of political and economic stability in Iraq, and before the Iraqi military is capable of taking on insurgent militias and Al Qaeda, then we will face a much worse world than if we stay. There would certainly be a humanitarian catastrophe as the Shiite majority, with Iranian support, took revenge on the Sunni minority, urged on by Al Qaeda. Nothing would serve more effectively as a recruiting and financing tool for Al Qaeda than the image of U.S. forces fleeing Iraq in retreat. Al Qaeda would also have a new base of operations against us and all of our allies in the region. Iran would instantly become the regional hegemon, emboldening all of its most provocative leaders and policies.



Syria and its surrogates in Hezbollah would use the opportunity to move on Lebanon. Every potential challenger to American supremacy would be immediately and irrevocably convinced that the United States will always back down. The cumulative effect would be nothing short of disastrous.

Barack Obama’s position on Iraq is either dishonest but rational, or honest but catastrophic. If Barack Obama is being honest about his Iraq policy, then he shouldn’t be let anywhere near the White House. Obama’s stated policy is to immediately begin withdrawing our forces as fast as possible, one or two brigades a month, and to have all combat forces out within 16 months. A policy of unconditional withdrawal would be understood by everyone everywhere as an unconditional surrender.  All nightmare scenarios would come to pass.

Obama seems like a smart guy, but how could such a nutty plan be anything but a lie to get the far left vote? There are pretty good reasons to believe that Obama has no intention of enacting such a ridiculous policy. But that makes him a liar willing to say anything to get votes. Samantha Power, the Harvard Professor who was his chief foreign policy advisor, was fired by Obama because she told the BBC his pledge to withdraw from Iraq meant nothing.

She said, “You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009. He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.”

He will rely upon a plan that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president.

So to think it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, “Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me. It’s a best-case scenario.”

But it is clear that Samantha Power didn’t just misspeak. Last week, Colin Kahl, Obama’s lead advisor on Iraq, published a paper for the Center for a New American Security in which he argued persuasively that the U.S. should keep a combat force of 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2010. The Obama campaign quickly disavowed Colin Kahl’s paper, stating that it did not represent Obama’s policy.

The trouble with that response is that Professor Kahl is a really smart guy who is right. If Obama pig-headedly refuses to listen to his chief foreign policy advisors who seem to be telling him that his plan to surrender in Iraq would be disastrous, then he shouldn’t be president. It looks like Obama is just telling the far left what it wants to hear but plans to stay in Iraq after getting elected. But if we’re going to get McCain’s Iraq policy anyway, why vote for Obama’s Iraq lie?


Round 2: Say what? McCain is too old school to hang!
By Helen Acosta, Bakersfield College

I have great respect for my friend and colleague, Michael. We have spent years discussing political issues and we enjoy the thought-provoking repartee. Now that I’ve dispensed with the niceties, let’s get down to business.

John McCain’s Cold War mentality on Iraq is bankrupting our nation. His old-fashioned insistence on fighting a war against a single nation has drawn our focus away from the real threat: A mobile, stateless terror network. Al Qaeda crisscrosses international lines like a snake weaving across desert dunes. We don’t have resources to follow them wherever they go because we are tied down to the fighting in the Basrah or Tikrit or Karbala or Anbar Province.

McCain’s myopic viewpoint has sucked our increasingly limited national resources away from the real threat thus allowing the terror networks to flourish. All the while our current commander in chief has been spending money faster than the Federal Reserve can print it. The result has been a dollar that has dropped so low that prices have begun to soar while median incomes have stagnated. Ron Paul will tell you that we are in a monetary death spiral caused primarily by this war.

The flaw in McCain and Korcok’s logic is the idea that we have the resources to “win” this war. We don’t. McCain didn’t get the size of a surge that he wanted because we didn’t have enough personnel to mount the effort he called for. No matter how much money we throw at this war we still won’t have enough people to put on the ground in order to “win.”



We have the most industrious, most capable, most adaptable soldiers the U.S. has ever seen but they are a much smaller force than the military of McCain’s day. They have spent two to four tours of duty in Iraq and our guardsmen who have already done full tours are now being sent over to fight on their “training weekends.” Our servicemen and women are doing their best, but we simply don’t have enough personnel to sustain peace in a nation that isn’t really sure it wants to be a nation - much less a nation that acts as the “buffer state” that we want it to be.

As an Army brat born on base in Japan, and the daughter of an Army brat who grew up on bases all over the globe, I know what it takes to sustain peace through military strength. It takes not years but entire lifetimes of occupation. You have to build 737 bases in other countries, some of which overfly state houses in capitol cities on a daily basis. For five decades our soldiers have to spend their entire tours of duty standing on the jagged line that marks the great divide of what was once a single nation and generations of Americans are born and grow up on foreign soil, all at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Obama offers another path, a path that moves us beyond weapons stockpiles of the Cold War. It is a path that will allow us to live within our means and one day soon stop wasting our limited resources being the world’s police. It is the path that President Eisenhower urged America to take as he left office in 1961. In the speech in which he coined the phrase “military industrial complex” Eisenhower warned, “Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” In the speech he urged a more balanced approach, “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

Both Bush and McCain have mortgaged our grandchildren’s future and endangered the future of our democracy. We need a president who will use the bully pulpit of the executive office to convince the American public that it is time for radical change. We need a president who will use words to inspire, a president who will rebuild our alliances, rebuild our infrastructure and make a better world for our grandchildren.

President Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan, supports Obama as I believe her grandfather would have. He was a man who loved peace and understood the true costs of war. I leave you with his words: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Helen Acosta and Michael Korcok teach in the Bakersfield College Communication Department. Acosta, Korcok and their colleague, John Giertz will continue their political discussions while they explore the unique communication situations only found once every four years in the U.S. presidential election cycle. To take part in the discussion sign up for Comm 49d Political Communication: The Presidential Election. Classes will be held from 2:25 to 3:50 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays this fall 2008 at Bakersfield College.

Article also printed in Bakotopia magazine, issue 26, 4-17-08

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Comment From: AnnieLWhite

I hate McCain when it comes to him being the president. but as far as age? who cares. look at hugh hefner dude, everything is posible. Comment From: twinkie

I agree with McCain's health plan but not his stance on the war. Great articles, both of them.