“Bottom line is, McCain made a political, not a principled military calculation.”
That is in your opinion. In mine he backed an option that few were pushing even on this board! We may not like some of his stands, but they seem to be based on his principles whether we agree with them or not.
“In mine he backed an option that few were pushing even on this board!”
Just because things aren’t discussed on this forum doesn’t mean they’re not happening. A whole lot of people were pushing for more troops. It doesn’t take Einstein to figure out that if a war isn’t going well, more forces might help. And plenty of people had been pushing for more troops from the getgo. Overwhelming force is one of the first things they teach in Warfare 101, but Rumsfeld, a classic military dilettante, thought he knew better than anyone else. McCain was actually quite late to the “if we’re going to have a war, let’s actually fight the flippin’ thing” bandwagon.