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John McCain is a war hero, and advocates permanent wars regardless the cost in lives and drain on the economy. He also knows that allowing gays to serve in the military is wrong, regardless that a majority of Americans, the Pentagon, and service members support repealing DADT. McCain also doesn’t want an end to the war in Afghanistan because he has gross memory loss regarding the Iraq war.

McCain supports continuing the Afghanistan war even though the economic cost is crippling America and destroying the lives of soldiers and innocent Afghan people. For a man who claims to champion fiscal responsibility and follow the will of the American people, McCain’s support for a permanent state of war does not make any sense.

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Last week, McCain said “we cannot leave Afghanistan until we achieve total victory, and then the soldiers can come home; just like President Bush did in Iraq.” Senator McCain has a distorted view of the Iraq war, and must be ignorant of the history behind the withdrawal of combat forces.

President Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi leadership that set a firm date for getting the combat troops out of the country. If McCain calls that victory, and if he thinks our troops are gone from Iraq, he is deluded. There are still thousands of troops in Iraq, and there are an equal number of private security contractors in the country, so McCain’s notion that we won the war and brought our soldiers home is an epic mystery.

There is still violence in Iraq, and if we did win the war, there would be no need to have troops in the country. Iraq continues to be a financial drain on the economy and we spend billions of dollars every month for, according to McCain, a war we already won, and withdrew our troops.

The war in Afghanistan continues to drain America’s human and economic resources, and as long as there is an insurgency in the country, the war will continue with no end in sight. That is what McCain proposes, staying in Afghanistan until there is a victory. The problem with McCain is that he changes the standards of measure to fit his martial tendencies, and that is a dangerous position for our economy and our soldiers.

The debate over repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is an example of McCain changing the requirements to get his support. He keeps changing the conditions so he will never have to support the repeal, and he will never support withdrawing troops from any war, or any country. His statement that we should stay in Afghanistan until we are victorious shows his preference of keeping the country in a state of permanent war. In 2008 McCain tried to make a case for starting a war with Iran, and he put his belief in song with his “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” chant set to a Beach Boys melody.

For people like John McCain, there is a belief that most of the country’s assets should be spent on defense. He opposes cuts in defense spending, and wants increases every year regardless the state of the economy. America spends more on defense than every other industrialized country in the world combined, including our allies.

At what point will McCain comprehend that a great portion of America’s debt is due to wars and the belief that America must have armies in every country in the world? Without a cessation of war, and withdrawal of our troops from countries that are our allies, America will continue its economic spiral. America will never be rid of warmongers like John McCain, or his militaristic mindset that is borne of “American Exceptionalism” that is causing the country to fall behind the rest of the world.

John McCain may be a war hero, and he has served the country with devotion, but his memory and understanding of the world is stuck in 1950. He doesn’t remember the reason combat troops left Iraq, and it may be that his PTSD has finally gotten the better of him.

Whatever his excuse, McCain is ill-equipped to give recommendations or opinions about getting out of Afghanistan, repealing DADT, or continuing America’s imperialism. America is involved in two wars, has military bases in our allies’ countries, and John McCain wants to bomb Iran; it is time for the warmonger and homophobe McCain to go home, sit down, and shut up.