McBush Masters Reading the Tea Leaves

John McBush McCain with a prescience unknown in the histories of statesmanship predicts the U.S. war in Iraq will end with victory in 2013–implicity, at the beginning of his second term as president, after a first term impressing the Iraqi rebels with how tough he is and by extension how tough the U.S. Army can become.

McBush’s reading of the of the bottom of his cup of Orange Pekoe refreshes. Most actual or would-be leaders–witness the man McBush wishes to become–predict wars, at their beginnings, to be over in a few days or months, with their side victorious. All of the leading brains of Europe knew in August 1914 the little spat between the Austrians and Germans and the Serbs, French and English and Russians would see the their troops staging victory parades just as Santa Claus or Father Christmas made his next appearance.

But McBush fought his war in Vietnam, where it took the Vietnamese six years to kick our asses out of their country. On no evidence whatever except the successful stubbornness of several of the sides in the Iraqi religious civil war, McBush hunches that this little dustup ruining his nation’s military forces and treasury and currency and economy may last a little longer–four more years than our defeat in Vietnam.

So far none of the press I’ve read has bothered to see what other sages say about McBush’s reading of the omens. After all, he is either a soothsayer or a fool and either eminently prepares him to lead this great nation where 70 percent of the population routinely report to strangers polling on the phone that they expect Satan to tapdance on the street corners and pitchfork passing souls into the eternal fires.