Although his campaign is still trying to walk back his "100 years" comment, it isn't working because, as Hendrik Hertzberg points out, even in context it is clear that McCain meant what he said. The questioner suggested we might have to stay for fifty years, and McCain, preaching counterinsurgency, said:
"make it a hundred... That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.... I have an open-ended commitment in Asia. I have an open-ended commitment in South Korea. I have an open-ended commitment in Bosnia."
Now it is absolutely true that his point was that an open ended commitment would be fine if there was no violence in Iraq, and that's why he went on to make the South Korea and Bosnia comparisons. The problem, of course, is that this is the Middle East we are talking about, not Asia or Europe, and that makes all the difference. We aren't fighting an insurgency in Asia or Europe because in both of those places we have been asked by the people through their governments to stay. No doubt there are some in South Korea who would prefer we leave, but they aren't about to take up arms against us to make that happen.
In Iraq, of course, the situation is entirely different. Not only are we fighting an insurgency hell bent on getting us to leave their country, we are also fighting people who are motivated to do so by their religious beliefs. And that's what makes the comparison to these other places so dangerously ignorant. Both Sunni and Shi'a Islamic extremists believe that it is their sacred obligation to take up arms against non-Muslim armies in their holy lands. Those religious beliefs are more than a millennium old, making them as much a part of the region's culture as its religion. There is nothing even remotely comparable to that situation in Korea or the Balkans.
And that's why McCain's "make it a hundred" comment is so dangerous. If we keep our military in Iraq for the next 100 years, we are likely to spend most of that time fighting a violent insurgency. Our presence there is one of the primary causes of violence. Even if the Iraqis come to some sort of political reconciliation, there will still be many inside Iraq, including a significant number who are willing to take up arms, who want us to leave. And who could blame them after the hell that we unleashed on them? Long lens of history or no, right now they have every reason and every right to want us to leave. Supporters of the war may not like this fact, but that doesn't make it any less real. Iraq belongs to the people who live there, and it is they, not us, who will decide if we can stay.
So when Sen. McCain suggests we might stay in Iraq for a hundred years, he is once again making clear his fundamental ignorance of the situation. He may think it an unfair criticism, but that is only because he is so confused.
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