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McCain surrogate tells Dominican students to prepare for war with Iran in next four years - Marin Independent Journal
McCain surrogate tells Dominican students to prepare for war with Iran in next four years
A Republican charged with representing the views of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain told Dominican University students Thursday that war with Iran in the next four years is inevitable.
The prediction came during a campus event in which teams of Dominican students presented the positions of McCain and his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, on six key issues: the economy, foreign policy, environment, health care, education and ethics.
About 850 students packed Dominican's Angelico Hall and several hundred more watched the event on video monitors. The audience used digital keypads to vote on various policy issues. But they were never asked which of the two candidates they plan to vote for.
The purpose of the event, which was sponsored by the university, was to get students more engaged with issues rather than focusing on the horse race aspect of the election, said Alison Howard, an adjunct instructor in Dominican's Department of Politics and International Studies.
Dominican University President Joe Fink kicked off the event by telling students that given the number of challenges the country faces, "it is all the more important that those of you in this audience become involved. Change is really going to come from you who are young."
After each presentation, brief comments were added by Republican William Grayson, president of a San Francisco hedge fund company and former general counsel for the San Francisco Republican Central Committee, and Tony West, apartner at a San Francisco law firm and co-chairman of the Obama campaign's California finance committee.
"Let me assure you of this," Grayson said after the student presentation on foreign policy. "The next president, whether it is Senator Obama or John McCain, will go to war, and he will go to war with Iran.
"They are very busy developing nuclear weapons. They will use those nuclear weapons against Israel or any of its allies, and that is a war that we're going to fight," Grayson said.
To which West responded, "I guess this is where we start to disagree."
"I do not believe it is a foregone conclusion that this nation will go to war with anybody in the next four or eight years," West said. Students on the foreign policy team said Grayson's war forecast surprised them.
"It kind of caught everybody off guard," said Jena Goyner, 21, who is studying history and political science at Dominican. "College students don't want to hear that. We don't want to hear that we've been trapped in war for six years, and we're about to go get into another one."
Juleah Cordi, 20, who is majoring in political science, said, "I don't agree with his prediction. I think there are other ways to handle it. I think those options are going to at least be looked into or attempted before war is sought out."
After the event Grayson, who said he was cleared by the McCain campaign to serve as a McCain surrogate for the event, said his prediction "might have been a little inflammatory."
"To be perfectly clear, I probably should have said, more likely than not, or some qualifier," Grayson said.
He added, "I could foresee an assault by Israel on Iran. I could see calculated strikes on their nuclear building facilities in Iran by Israel or the United States or some combination of allies. I think there are a lot of different scenarios that could unfold that would trigger that sort of confrontation."
Given the economic crisis and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Grayson conceded that a ground war in Iran, which might be necessary to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, would test the limits of the nation's resources.
"The bottom line is, yes we're stretched thin," Grayson said. "It's going to be hard to fight multiple wars on multiple fronts."
McCain surrogate tells Dominican students to prepare for war with Iran in next four years
A Republican charged with representing the views of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain told Dominican University students Thursday that war with Iran in the next four years is inevitable.
The prediction came during a campus event in which teams of Dominican students presented the positions of McCain and his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, on six key issues: the economy, foreign policy, environment, health care, education and ethics.
About 850 students packed Dominican's Angelico Hall and several hundred more watched the event on video monitors. The audience used digital keypads to vote on various policy issues. But they were never asked which of the two candidates they plan to vote for.
The purpose of the event, which was sponsored by the university, was to get students more engaged with issues rather than focusing on the horse race aspect of the election, said Alison Howard, an adjunct instructor in Dominican's Department of Politics and International Studies.
Dominican University President Joe Fink kicked off the event by telling students that given the number of challenges the country faces, "it is all the more important that those of you in this audience become involved. Change is really going to come from you who are young."
After each presentation, brief comments were added by Republican William Grayson, president of a San Francisco hedge fund company and former general counsel for the San Francisco Republican Central Committee, and Tony West, apartner at a San Francisco law firm and co-chairman of the Obama campaign's California finance committee.
"Let me assure you of this," Grayson said after the student presentation on foreign policy. "The next president, whether it is Senator Obama or John McCain, will go to war, and he will go to war with Iran.
"They are very busy developing nuclear weapons. They will use those nuclear weapons against Israel or any of its allies, and that is a war that we're going to fight," Grayson said.
To which West responded, "I guess this is where we start to disagree."
"I do not believe it is a foregone conclusion that this nation will go to war with anybody in the next four or eight years," West said. Students on the foreign policy team said Grayson's war forecast surprised them.
"It kind of caught everybody off guard," said Jena Goyner, 21, who is studying history and political science at Dominican. "College students don't want to hear that. We don't want to hear that we've been trapped in war for six years, and we're about to go get into another one."
Juleah Cordi, 20, who is majoring in political science, said, "I don't agree with his prediction. I think there are other ways to handle it. I think those options are going to at least be looked into or attempted before war is sought out."
After the event Grayson, who said he was cleared by the McCain campaign to serve as a McCain surrogate for the event, said his prediction "might have been a little inflammatory."
"To be perfectly clear, I probably should have said, more likely than not, or some qualifier," Grayson said.
He added, "I could foresee an assault by Israel on Iran. I could see calculated strikes on their nuclear building facilities in Iran by Israel or the United States or some combination of allies. I think there are a lot of different scenarios that could unfold that would trigger that sort of confrontation."
Given the economic crisis and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Grayson conceded that a ground war in Iran, which might be necessary to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, would test the limits of the nation's resources.
"The bottom line is, yes we're stretched thin," Grayson said. "It's going to be hard to fight multiple wars on multiple fronts."
