Editor,
Selective perception clouded columnist Scott Darnell's vision when he described Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, as gutsy Wednesday. Gutsy is not a person who walked with President Bush into a disaster; gutsy is not a person who was adamantly against torture but caved when it was politically expedient; gutsy is not a person who hugs a man that spread lies in South Carolina during the 2000 Republican primary; and gutsy is not a man that will do and say anything to gain the Republican presidential nomination.
The majority of Republicans support Bush, and conservative Republicans love to listen to his rhetoric about victory. It is not gutsy to court the people who will decide the nominee for the Republican Party, just politically expedient.
McCain would be gutsy if he admitted 20,000 troops will do nothing but delay the inevitable. He would be gutsy if he demanded the U.S. send in hundreds of thousands of troops to secure victory. He would be gutsy to call for a draft, because that is the only option the U.S. has to end the violence in Iraq.
McCain will support a troop increase, and when it fails, he will blame the Iraqi government. This is not gutsy; it simply exposes our troops to danger for a policy that will gain McCain the support he desperately needs from the Republican base to secure a nomination.
Sen. Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat, was correct when he said Bush "disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War; the chief of staff of the army; two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq; the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed."
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
McCain would be gutsy to echo these words.
Darnell calls McCain impulsive and independent, but McCain is no more a maverick than Bush was an outsider.
McCain is calculating. He described Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" but now actively courts these men - such as when he gave the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University in May.
Gutsy is Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who spoke out against this war even when his view contradicted the majority of Americans and the majority of Democrats.
As for Obama being inexperienced, this country had the most experienced foreign policy team to ever enter the White House in 2001. Vice President Cheney was a former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld was a former secretary of defense, Colin Powell was a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Condoleezza Rice served as a senior adviser to the first Bush as a member of the National Security Council.
If Iraq is what experience has to offer, give me Obama.
Angel Padilla
UNM student
