Griper Blade: Nothing is the President's Fault

John McCain isn't running for president. Not in the constitutional sense, anyway. McCain is running for the extra-constitutional position of Guy-Who-Does-Whatever-The-Generals-Tell-Him. This position was invented by the current GWDWTGTH, George W, Bush, so he could pretend that irrational, irresponsible, and braindead policies for the occupation of Iraq are not his own. In the Bush playbook, once you start a war, it's completely out of your hands and Generals get to dictate policies to the executive. Once this happens, the executive doesn't even get to disagree.

Of course, in practice Bush's GWDWTGTH isn't at all what he pretends it to be. If one of your military commanders give you advice you don't like, you fire him. Then you hire some yes-man and pretend that all of your ideas are his. The position of GWDWTGTH has built-in plausible deniability. It allows the executive to wash his hands of all responsibility and claim that stubbornly pursuing unpopular and boneheaded policies is the only course of action available to him.

John McCain expressed his desire to be the GWDWTGTH last week. In trying to explain away his "hundred years" comment, McCain outlined his position as identical to Bush's.

Address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri, courtesy of National Review (emphasis mine):

Throughout this period, we must continue to help the Iraqis protect themselves against the terrorists and the insurgents. We must press ahead against the radical Shi’ite militias and the Iranian-backed Special Groups, and support the Iraqi government’s efforts to defeat them. We must continue to support the Sunni volunteers of the Iraqi Awakening as they stand up to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, especially in the ongoing battle for Mosul. And we must continue to build the capacities of the Iraqi Security Forces so that they can play an increasingly strong and neutral role in suppressing sectarian violence.

All this will require that we keep a sufficient level of American forces in Iraq until security conditions are such that our commanders on the ground recommend otherwise. It also means we must increase levels of reconstruction assistance, so that Iraq’s political and economic development can proceed in the security that our forces and Iraqi Security Forces provide.

John McCain is running as a military expert. Now he's saying that he won't actually be running the war -- that's someone else's job. In which case, you've got to ask yourself, what the hell difference does it make if you're running for the position of Guy-Who-Does-Whatever-The-Generals-Tell-Him?...

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