John McCain has attempted to justify his comments about keeping troops in Iraq for "100 years" and his statement that "it doesn't matter" when the troops come home from Iraq by comparing the (future) situation in Iraq to the (current) situation in Korea.
He said in his appearance this morning (video here) that the important question was casualties, citing Korea as an example of a place where there are lots of U.S. troops who are not "coming home" any time soon, but where there are no casualties, so it is not a problem.
However, this is mixing apples and oranges.
And what McCain is able to do by continually referring to the (current) Korean situation is avoid the question of when Iraq is going to look like Korea or how we will get there.
What makes Korea different from Iraq is that we withdrew from the part of Korea where Americans were taking casualties more than 50 years ago. The more appropriate analogy between Iraq today and Korea is the situation there prior to the cease fire, when American troops occupied (temporarily) territory which is now controlled by the North Koreans.
In order for McCain's Korea analogy to be accurate, we would have to still be in control of all of the territory we captured in the initial phase of the Korean War, (i.e. prior to the time we were pushed back to the present demarcation line) without suffering major casualties.
The fact is, that Americans withdrew from the part of Korea which the North Koreans contested the most. And that is the reason why Americans are not taking casualties in Korea. If we were to try to occupy all of the Korean peninsula in the same way we are occupying Iraq, does anyone doubt that we would be taking tremendous casualties right now?
No, the real lesson of the Korean War is that Americans withdrew (or were forced to withdraw) from a sizable portion of the Korean Peninsula after they captured it and only after they withdrew was peace possible.
I might also point out that it was a Republican President (Eisenhauer) who was responsible for ending that war. If McCain were really interested in historical analogies and consistency he would be criticizing Eisenhauer for "cutting and running" in Korea. But I don't think we'll be hearing that from him any time soon.