McCain's "Wisdom"

Today's opinion piece in the WSJ on Obama opens up what will surely be a favored line of attack through the rest of this election: Obama means well but he's naive and immature. Can't be trusted with the security of the nation.

The main point of the essay is that Obama doesn't understand defeat and the consequences of defeat in quite the mature and deep-seated way that McCain understands it. Noting that Obama only has one defeat on his resume (a failed bid for Congress), the comparisons to McCain's Vietnam (and post-Vietnam) experience with the demoralized military of the Seventies are meant to suggest that McCain possesses the measured wisdom earned through decades of experience.

However, there is a howling mistake in the examples given. First, McCain virtually jerked the rug out from under President Clinton, forcing a rapid exit and withdrawal from Somalia in the wake of a firefight that left U.S. soldiers dead, their bodies defiled on television. But then, years later, McCain wrote that Osama bin Laden saw a weakness in the United States' withdrawal and felt emboldened to act. So, which is it? Was McCain wise to push for withdrawal from Somalia instead of escalating our involvement? Or was he foolish for cutting our losses and retreating in shame? Are we meant to infer that McCain has somehow learned from his mistake?