McCain will win the election by saying Obama will lose the war.

Obama may lose the election because McCain has changed the conversation about the war. Obama’s huge strength as a candidate is that he had the courage to oppose the worst U.S. foreign policy mistake of the past fifty years, and possibly of all time. Yet, McCain paints Obama as naïve and inexperienced in foreign policy and military affairs. McCain keeps saying that Obama wants to let the U.S. lose the war in Iraq, but Obama is not really answering this charge, except to defend his patriotism and repeat that he will impose a timetable.

What Obama needs to repeat with all is oratory skill is that the war was never really designed to protect American interests. It was a blind spasm by a misguided President, a Wag-the-Dog diversion erected by his neo-con Vice-President who was determined to simultaneously subvert the constitution and destroy many of the noble values for which this country has stood. It has given a blank check to military contractors to whom the Republican Party is beholden, and to an unstable and dependent government in Iraq that will never step up and unless we are serious about stepping out. We financed the entire multi-trillion dollar war on credit and we can't fix our economy until we stop pouring money into this sinkhole. The only way to preserve American dignity, our stature in the world and our national treasury is to get on a timetable. Unlike Bush and McCain, Obama can show that as a leader, he has the discipline to get us out of the mess.

The public tolerated the war for a long time, even as facts mounted that the evidence for it was rigged, because people assumed the war was really about ensuring reliable and affordable fixes for our addiction to oil. Stratospheric gas prices exploded that myth.

Obama has already said these things, but in his quest to be seen as a uniter, he now seems afraid to offend any potential supporter. But unless he steps up, he risks losing the enthusiastic support of those who were passionate about his courage to lead, and worse, being unable to shake McCain’s tagging him as a weak leader. Today, he seems to have moved far away from his bold criticisms in 2002:

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.