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John McCain
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - John McCain said Tuesday that he knows "how to win wars" and that the strategy of increasing troop levels in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan.
McCain has described Barack Obama's call for withdrawal from Iraq as tantamount to declaring defeat and pointed to recent lower levels of violence in Iraq as evidence that sending additional U.S. troops there has been a successful strategy.
"Senator Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards," McCain told a town hall meeting in Albuquerque. "It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan."
McCain added: "I know how to win wars. And if I'm elected president, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."
Asked later about the claim he knows how to win wars, McCain said such knowledge comes from his involvement in "all of the major national security challenges of the last 20 years." He mentioned the Iraq troop increase, the first Gulf War, the crises in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, and Vietnam, where he was a Navy pilot and prisoner of war.
McCain laid out a blueprint for intensified military efforts in Afghanistan, where nine U.S. soldiers were killed in a militant attack Sunday, the U.S. military's highest death toll there in three years.
"The status quo is not acceptable. Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated, and our enemies are on the offensive," he said. "From the moment the next president walks into the Oval Office, he will face critical decisions and crucial decisions about Afghanistan."
Three more brigades of troops should be sent to Afghanistan, McCain said, as well as a presidential envoy to deal with countries vying for power in the region.
McCain said the extra brigades could be brought to Afghanistan as troops are removed from Iraq, but speaking later to reporters, he hedged on whether some of those troops could come from NATO instead of the United States.
The Afghan army, meanwhile, must be doubled to about 160,000 troops, he said, and he called on foreign countries to help pay for the additional cost.
He also insisted there was a "vast difference" between Obama's call for more troops in Afghanistan and his own.
Obama "has no strategy," insisted McCain. "All he has done is say we need more troops."
On a final matter, McCain said, "I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice," referring to the Al-Qaida leader the United States has pursued futilely since the group's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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