McCain to Obama: You'll meet with Iran but not Petraeus?

Here’s the latest from the RNC. Like I said, St. Barack’s not going to let this storyline follow him around all year. He’ll meet with Petraeus or one of his associates eventually, after biding his time for another month or two in case conditions start to deteriorate again so that the inevitable meeting can be held under more “favorable” circumstances. How about a compromise, though? Instead of meeting with Petraeus, have him sit down with McMaster for a taste of this:

The first misperception I think is that violence in Iraq occurs primarily because we’re there. And I think that this really, you know, is kind of a hubristic interpretation of events there on our part. I mean, things happen in Iraq because we’re fighting determined enemies who were pursuing objectives and strategies that are inimical to our interests. Those who were fighting us and Iraqi security forces and murdering innocent civilians there view the achievement of an outcome in Iraq consistent with our interests as inimical to their interests. And who is this enemy and why are they doing what they’re doing I think is an important thing for the American people to understand and for us maybe to talk about more…

There has been some real bottom up movement toward the political accommodation I mentioned just a moment ago. And what we are seeing now I think is some top down movement toward political accommodation as well and we could talk specifically about how some of the political dynamics over the last couple of months have created a condition from maybe movement toward political accommodation at the national level. But what has happened and I think we can see this now in retrospect is that political accommodation at the local level has placed some social pressure on the Iraqi government to move in the same direction or key actors within the Iraqi government who represent portions of the communities who were fighting each other.

The effect on Iraqi society, the third thing that has changed I think, is a rekindling of hope.

I like at the end how he mentions continuing this discussion with Obama “and Senator Clinton as well.” Just in case!