McEmpire

McCain would love to see US troops stationed peacefully in Iraq for the foreseeable future. To him it does not matter when they come home. What matters is that the casualty rate get low enough to persuade Americans they shouldn’t care about another expansion of American empire. In fact, the entire debate about bringing them home is puzzling and frustrating to McCain. After all, why should we bring them home when being there for ever is the point? — Andrew Sullivan

But this is what matters to Americans too. Andrew is right that this election is likely to be something of a referendum on neoconservative adventurism, but one thing it is likely not to be is a referendum on its noncombustible leftovers. Americans are fine with our Korean presence, even though that war was something of a disaster (or as neocons might say: unfinished). We left the Philippines because there was no regional threat to worry about. (Though Clinton couldn´t stay consistent on this. See the Taiwan Straits crisis of ´96.) If the question of ´permanent empire´ boils down to a matter of small ball — haggling over 30,000 vs. 90,000 troops, four versus twelve big bases — the American people will accept the larger numbers if, as I´ve said before, costs in blood and treasure are kept reasonably and acceptably low.