John's Address to the NRA

John McCain addressed the National Rifle Association today, below are his introductory remarks:

It is a pleasure to appear before you this morning. I see a lot of old friends here, friends like Jim Baker whom I worked with as long ago as the 1980s in the struggle to preserve firearms freedom. His hair was not so gray back then -- and I had a lot more of it.

This is a sophisticated crowd. You know politics, and you know politicians. You are pretty used to hearing aspirants for public office come before you and pledge fealty to the cause of the Second Amendment. You know you need to dig into a politician's record to find out where they really stand. You know some will change their position or have little record for you to judge. That is not the case with me

The full speech can be found here.

The Consequences of Surrender

John McCain is touring South Carolina right now on his No Surrender Tour, and made a stop in Greenville where he explained some of the consequences of surrender in Iraq:

With another Senate debate looming this week on a deadline for withdrawing from Iraq, Arizona Sen. John McCain said abandoning that country would lead to chaos and a period of national suffering at the hands of "evil, evil people."

Midway through his three-day "No Surrender" tour, McCain focused his brief remarks on Iraq in a packed VFW hall here, scarcely mentioning his Republican presidential candidacy.

"The strategy is succeeding," but hasn't had enough time to develop, McCain said of President Bush's troop surge.

"A date for withdrawal, I view as a date for surrender, that we would choose to lose. I don't believe we should choose to lose," he said.

McCain said that Democratic critics have "lost sight of a fundamental fact, that presidents don't lose wars and political parties don't lose wars, but nations lose wars and when nations lose wars, nations suffer."

Precipitous withdrawal, he said, would create chaos "that almost certainly would require us to come back" when Iran almost certainly moves to fill the void.

Islamic extremists are "evil, evil people ... dedicated to the destruction of everything we stand for and believe in," McCain said.

You can read the full article here, courtesy of the Greenville News.

Many on the Left like to say that we should leave Iraq, and immediately at that. Yet why do they want us to leave? To save lives? Pretty much every expert agrees that things will almost certainly fall apart after we leave, and an open, rather than a mostly contained, civil war will take place? So whose lives do they intend to save? American lives? Do they somehow think that handing the country mostly over to Iran, a nation which has waged a subtle yet real war against us for almost 30 years will save American lives? And after all, doesn't preferring to save American lives over Iraqi lives reek of a not-so-subtle nationalism that Leftists decry anyways.

John is right. Nations lose wars, but those on the Left who oppose this war don't care. They seek short-term gain for themselves, and ignore the long-term harm to this nation, and the whole world, from surrender.