Robert Schlesinger: McCain's Numbers: 2013, 4, 100 ... to inanity and beyond!

by Robert Schlesinger [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

First the House GOP borrowed Effexor's slogan, now John McCain seems to be absconding with Barack Obama's. His Mc-stradamus act (by way of Edward Bellamy) yesterday was the very definition of the audacity of hope.

As in he hopes that within four years of taking office, the Iraq war will be concluded. The press see this as a walk-back of his wish for a century-long, Korea-style military presence in Iraq. I explain over at Robert Emmet why this is not so, but let me add some of my own numbers to the equation: We currently have around 132,000 troops in Iraq (and another 30,000 in the area); withdrawing, say, 100,000 of them could truthfully be described as "most" having come home ... and would leave enough to have a Korea-like 30,000 troops to keep the Iraqi democracy thriving.

Of course the audacity of hope has its own pitfalls -- the criticism that McCain and Hillary Clinton have deployed against Obama holds for the Arizona senator back from the future performance yesterday: Long on nice words, short on details of how we get from here to there.

Among those who don't see the path are the actual political leaders in Baghdad. This from today's Washington Post:

In Iraq, political leaders were skeptical as well.

"2013?" said Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, who burst into laughter after a reporter described the speech. "I don't expect the United States will leave Iraq for another 50 years. They might withdraw their forces from the cities and streets, but they will not leave Iraq."

Burst into laughter indeed.