Yesterday John McCain proudly accepted the endorsement of President Bush, this demonstrates more than just McCain’s need to win over the Republican base which is predominantly made up of the 19% in the U.S. that are currently satisfied with President Bush’s performance. This public alliance between Bush and McCain also solidifies McCain’s willingness to push all of his chips into the center on Bush’s War in Iraq. McCain has been very open about betting his campaign on the success of the surge in Iraq.

Many Democrats believe that McCain is dooming his campaign for the Presidency by aligning himself with Bush and agreeing with Bush about how to proceed in Iraq. This may not prove to be the case depending how the Iraq situation develops in the next eight months. The way that the debate has been framed on the Iraq War in the mainstream press Senators Obama and Clinton are supposedly in stark contrast to McCain by stating that they hope to redeploy most combat troops in their first two years in office. Neither one of the Democratic candidates is willing to go further and make a promise to have all combat troops removed from Iraq by the end of their first term. Their plans will leave many troops remaining in the region allowing them to return to the region should they be needed. Neither Obama nor Clinton has emphasized the immorality of the occupation or the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of the war and occupation.

As long as the United States government is unable to let go of their vast military empire, there is no reasonable solution in Iraq. The Democrats are trying to have it both ways and it is simply not going to work. They want a form of democracy in the region that is not likely without the presence of U.S. troops. The recent visit of Iranian President Ahmadinejad has shown that by removing Arab nationalism from Iraq the country is more likely to gravitate toward Islamic fundamentalism. They are simply not accepting the Iraqi nationalism being forced down their throats by the occupying forces. We have seen this before in the Middle East with the rise of Hamas after the PLO failed to succeed.

General David Petraeus will appear before Congress on the 8^th and 9^th of next month. His statements are expected to emphasize the continued decrease in the rate of U.S. deaths in Iraq and the continued overall reduction of violence and relative stabilization of Iraq.

The U.S. military has begun to bring troops home and they expect to have removed 20,000 troops by July. At that point Petraeus has stated that he wants to have a 4-6 week waiting period before they decide whether or not to continue withdrawing troops. That 4-6 week waiting period would end at the time when the just recently renewed Mahdi Army cease-fire would be set to expire. So if Al-Sadr extends the cease-fire once again in late August, expect Petraeus to come to Washington calling for a shockingly large number of troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. The Bush administration would love to far exceed expectations by getting the troop level well below 100,000. To go one step further, Bush could also, for all intents and purposes, essentially declare victory in Iraq, stealing the Democrats thunder.

The most crucial variable in the whole equation is the expiration of the Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army cease-fire. The Mahdi Army have demonstrated on several occasions the devastation and chaos they can cause in a short period of time. U.S. forces are looking to curb the Mahdi Army’s potential impact by temporarily forfeiting the South. The occupying forces are just looking to hold their ground in Baghdad and wait until after the Presidential election to worry about the South and Al-Sadr. Doing whatever is necessary to hold onto the gains that have been made. I would not be surprised to see U.S. forces make promises they can’t keep, cook the numbers, paying the Sunnis to keep quiet and making backroom deals with Shiite leadership, whatever it takes to keep up the appearance of relative calm until after the vote in November.

Another factor to watch is that Iraqi leaders have expressed interest in holding elections in October. The Republicans will attempt to portray these elections as a transition into the final phase of the Iraq War.

This possible scenario of McCain actually using the Bush endorsement and his support for the staying the course mentality in Iraq demonstrates that there is only one way to be successful against McCain this November. His opponent is going to have to stand in opposition against the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war and the over extension of the U.S. military and the U.S. economy by way of intervention into sovereign country’s affairs. Obama and Clinton have failed to do this by not taking Iran completely off the table and talk of unilateral strikes inside of Pakistan.

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