McCain happy to stay for 100 years in Magic Pony Fantasy Iraq

Josh Marshall at the The Hill:

First we heard [from McCain] that it's not right to say that he's happy for the Iraq "war" to continue for a century because he's insisting that he's only OK with it if we're talking about the fantasy Iraq, where none of our soldiers ever gets killed and where we don't have to pay tens of billions of dollars a year to garrison the country. Even "occupation" is unacceptable, because what McCain says he's really talking about is a "presence" on the model of Korea, Japan and Germany. [...]

McCain's defenders come back with his caveats. Americans don't like being in Iraq because we're seeing American soldiers and Marines dying at a rate of one or more a day and it's costing us $100 billion a year. McCain's only for staying there forever as long as our troops aren't getting killed anymore. But this is simply a bizarre counterfactual that again shows how simply out of touch he is. While American casualties are down significantly from their peak in 2007, there's little reason to think our occupation will ever become bloodless. And even if Iraq becomes Finland, it will still take mountains of American cash to sustain it.

What McCain wants is to make a total commitment to the permanent garrisoning of Iraq but also add a big fat asterisk that stipulates that the occupation that has been bloody and fiscally ruinous will suddenly cease to be so in his fantasy future. But, again, that just makes it clear how out of touch he is — for all his trips to the region — with the real situation and where the American people are.

I think this is the right approach to McCain's remarks. It's not accurate to say he wants "100 more years of war." But it's totally legitimate to ask in what magical future will Iraq become a peaceful nation where American troops no longer get shot at.