After being told by Tim Russert on Meet the Press that both the Iraqi parliament and the U.S. Congress want a troop withdrawal, Senator McCain argued that he knew how democracies worked, and that America winning this war was the only way to gain peace in Iraq, if not the Middle East.

Ironically, and sadly, the Senator countered with two examples that actually contradicted his very arguments. First, after re-emphasizing the "consequences of failure" in Iraq, he drew a parallel with the bungled war in Vietnam. "I understand how democracies work, I saw it in Vietnam...and I saw in Vietnam the predictions that everything would be a worker's paradise in Vietnam, if we left. And thousands were executed and millions went to re-education camps...."

Senator McCain, please tell me that you weren't implying that we were wrong to pull out of Vietnam?

Then after Russert pointed out that this conflict in Iraq had been going for four years, with no end in sight, McCain used our own country as another example of the possible need for a protracted war. He stated that, "It took us about a hundred and some years before we had a bloody civil war to decide the future of our country."

Yes, Senator McCain, it took us some over "four score and seven years" to decide the future of our country. And by the way, you are also correct, it took a civil war to finally resolve the conflicts that divided our nation. Could it be that it will take a civil war to end the strife not only in Iraq, not only between the Sunnis and Shiites, but also in the whole of Middle East, as well? Can you imagine if any foreign governments had come into our country, occupied any of our states, or tried to dictate to the heads of either the South or the North? My father's family is from the South, and I can tell you unequivocally, that without a full Union victory, the South would still be fighting.

No, Senator McCain, a civil war, even a full-fledged war in the region may be as necessary for the Middle East as it was for America. It is my belief that we must leave Iraq, stop consummating al Qaeda's strategy to trap us in a war that will surely bleed us of treasures and lives, and let the Iraqis and their Middle Eastern neighbors be put on notice that they can no longer equivocate this conflict. Faced with the inevitable chaos and the very threat to their own leaderships, Arab governments might finally be willing to address the needs of their populations, change their own oppressive tactics, and actually join a true world coalition, which, in my opinion, is the only option that will lead to a real, and lasting peace.