"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."
Oops. That was Hillary.
I keep getting those two mixed up...
Meet John 'Dubya' McCain
If you like George Bush's foreign policy, you'll love the GOP's current candidate.
By J. Peter Scoblic
April 23, 2008
John McCain knows a lot less about foreign policy than he'd have us believe. This, anyway, is the impression that's been growing in recent weeks, not least because of a much-discussed New York Times story published recently that painted a growing divide in his campaign between "pragmatists" and "neoconservatives." The candidate reportedly lacks firm ideological convictions, so a battle for "McCain's soul" may be in the offing.
And it's true: Despite his decades of supposed national security experience, it's difficult to stick an "-ism" on the tail of McCain's approach to world affairs. He's been one of the president's most fervent backers on Iraq, and yet he has also criticized the unilateralist tendencies that led the United States to war without key allies. During the 1990s, he opposed U.S. intervention in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, but he knocked President Clinton for his unwillingness to commit ground troops to Kosovo. Even on Vietnam -- the intervention about which one suspects he has thought the most -- McCain has both asserted that the war was winnable and also questioned whether we could have succeeded.
But in truth, McCain's foreign policy is far more consistent than it seems. Much like George W. Bush, McCain sees the world in oppositional terms -- us versus them, and good versus evil. McCain speaks often of taking the lead "in fighting this transcendent issue of our time: the battle and struggle against radical Islamic extremism." To him, it is a "transcendent struggle between good and evil." This alone tells us much of what we need to know.
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This is why I hate it when
This is why I hate it when critics say that the candidates are all equivalent. Clinton made the first overtures toward a declaration of war with Iran. It was encapsulated in the political haiku of the "commander-in-chief threshold" that she and McCain had purportedly crossed. Any doubts about she meant were removed during the farce in Philadelphia. I simply wish Obama would seize on this. Unfortunately, he is always the one explaining his words and relations. Why can't Obama place Clinton on the defensive about her aggressive comments and clandestine meetings with right wing operatives? Maybe he isn't capable of the dark manipulations used with such skill by wielders of power.