In their second statement on Maliki's comments, the McCain campaign says, "voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders." They're massively underestimating the psychological impact of Maliki's statement. A lot of voters desperately want to leave Iraq, but feel a sense of responsibility to the Iraqi people, and they're told the Iraqi people need them, and so they reluctantly resign themselves to perpetual occupation. Maliki's comments free them of that responsibility. The political impact of this is tremendous: The long-standing moral blackmail of "we broke it, now we have to fix it" just dissipated. The Crate-and-Barrel theory is finished: The proprietors just told us to leave the store. If we don't want to be there, and the Iraqis don't want us there, what's the point?
