Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Obama’s Withdrawal Policy Could Lead to U.S. Fighting Wider War in Iraq, McCain Says

July 23, 2008 ABC

Sen. John McCain warns that Sen. Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan could reverse progress in Iraq, forcing Americans to return to Iraq to fight a wider war “We have succeeded but it’s still fragile. Sen. Obama’s strategy could easily reverse all the hard-fought gains we made,” McCain told ABC News’ David Wright on Wednesday in an interview that will air in part on “World News with Charles Gibson.”

“If we do what Sen. Obama wants us to do, we will risk having to come back and risk a wider war and defeat in the first major war since 9/11,” McCain said. “And that could be, have, is fraught with consequences of the United States of America’s security.”

Watch David Wright’s interview with Sen. John McCain tonight on ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson at 6:30ET.

McCain’s comments come a day after the Republican presumptive nominee unveiled new, harsh language in his attacks on his Democratic rival for not supporting President Bush’s 2007 troop “surge” policy in Iraq — a policy advocated by McCain. The policy is credited in part with helping to reduce violence in Iraq in the last year.

“I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” McCain told a crowd of 400 on Tuesday in Rochester, N.H. McCain repeated the line Wednesday at a campaign event in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Asked today whether he believes Obama would actually prefer losing in Iraq so that he could win the White House, McCain pointed to Obama’s comments made to ABC News’ Terry Moran Monday, in which he acknowledged that the surge succeeded in providing greater security, but that he stands by his original opposition to it.

“I cannot believe that any objective observer can conclude that the surge did not work and is not succeeding,” McCain told Wright. “It has succeeded and it is and we are winning this war and we will come home with victory and with honor.”

“We are responsible for our records. I was right. Sen. Obama was wrong. So therefore, I think I have more credibility about what the future should be as opposed to Sen. Obama, who if he had had his way, we would very likely be involved in a wider war today if we had done what he wanted to do,” McCain told Wright.

McCain: ‘I Was Right’ on Troop Surge
The Arizona senator has been eager to take credit for pushing the Bush administration to adopt a new troop surge plan, a position that wasn’t popular with the American public at the time.

He is well ahead of Obama when it comes to voters’ perception of who would be a stronger commander in chief, according to the latest ABC News poll.

By a wide margin of 63 to 26 percent, Americans pick McCain as more knowledgeable on world affairs, rate him much more highly in terms of readiness for the world stage and military leadership alike, and put him ahead of Obama by 50-41 percent in trust to handle “an unexpected major crisis,” according to the latest ABC News poll.

McCain told Wright the reduced level of insurgent attacks in Iraq would not have happened had the U.S. followed Obama’s insistence that the U.S. withdraw troops.

“I think that it’s very clear that Sen. Obama has refused to recognize that the strategy in Iraq called the surge has succeeded and that America has succeeded in Iraq and will come home with victory and with honor,” McCain said. “If he’d have had his way they’d have been out last month.”

McCain also stood by his comments to CBS’s Katie Couric that the turnaround in Iraq began with the “Anbar awakening” — a fact called into question by liberal bloggers and called “wrong” by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

The media was briefed on the Anbar awakening on Sept. 29, 2006 by commander, now-Gen. Sean McFarland, months before the surge was announced by President Bush in January 2007.