Foreign Follies
Leave it to John McCain to make Barack Obama appear to have the steady, sane foreign policy. With the Albanians’ declaration of independence in Kosovo, the retirement of Fidel Castro and the recent repudiation of Musharrraf’s PML-Q party in parliamentary elections in Pakistan, there have been a number of occasions in recent days for McCain to demonstrate the experience of his long years in Washington, and without fail he has flunked every test. Declaring that Russian hints of recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia in retaliation for Western recognition of Kosovo were “outrageous,” McCain remains dedicated to a fruitless, ruinous anti-Russian stance that he has maintained since his first presidential run when he was then singing the praises of Shevardnadze. He then denounced Obama for the latter’s suggestion that he would take the opportunity of Castro’s retirement to meet with the former dictator’s brother, showing that his approach towards Cuba policy is no more sensible or wise. Rather than use this historic moment to argue for a change in utterly failed Cuba policy, McCain remains committed to the status quo. On Pakistan, McCain has been and remains reflexively supportive of Musharraf’s regime, endorsing the same tainted embrace of Musharraf that has handicapped our Pakistan policy for at least the last two years.
But then it is hardly encouraging that one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzenzinski, is on the board of The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus, a group that is hardly subtle in its pro-Chechen and anti-Russian slant. Nor can we be reassured when Obama supports military strikes in Waziristan, even if this is current policy, when such strikes seem detrimental to broader strategic interests in South Asia. One of the few bright spots in Obama’s extremely worrisome foreign policy agenda is his willingness to hold talks with heads of regimes targeted by Washington with sanctions and viewed as hostile powers. In what is arguably the least important of the three regions, Obama seems to have the best policy, while echoing, or not explicitly, rejecting the reckless and provocative positions of the current administration in the other two. The election in November is going to result in one kind of disastrous foreign policy or another. It simply remains to be seen which regions of the world the next administration is going to destabilize.
Comments
relative to actual froreign policy experts, obamas team is dissapointing. relative to the beltway types he could have gotten it’s not bad.
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Or we could mind our own business. It’s a lot
less expensive, there’s no blowback, and there’s
no need to rely on a squadron of foreign policy
advisors.
Of course, the downside is that we wouldn’t need
to spend a bazillion dollars on bombs and bullets,
and there wouldn’t be a need to send in the Marines
to settle every ethnic clash or border skirmish
raging around the world.
Think of it: we’d come perilously close to balancing
an occasional budget. We could stop borrowing money
from the Chinese. Heck, even the monstrously large
federal government might actually shrink! We can’t
have that, can we?
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Come on Steve Hogan, you have me in stiches here. The beast needs to eat!!!
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McCain is manifestly insane and one should expect even dotty American electorate would realize that, when the campaign really gets under way.
With his bravados(his well known outbursts of rages) such as “hundred year occupation “ of Iraq, “bomb, bomb Iran” or promises of “many more wars” in the future ,Obama is going to make minced meat out of him. And rightly so.
Out of the three possible choices: McCain(demented),Hillary (hysterical bitch) and Barack Obama a gentleman, guess who is the favourite of this old Goldwater die-hard supporter?
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Forrest
You just described official Republican and Bush policy with the exception of your naive assumption that either side of the Welfare/War party has any intention of cutting back on the Imperial march to war.
McCain certainly is not and Obama will be led along the pat by the Democratic “neo-cons”
Bankrupt the country to bring on an Imperial Depression to destroy the Federal government. Then private armies roll up the wreckage and a picked man on a white horse is set up as dictator to rule over the wreckage. Not good for those of us who loved the old Republic. But there aren’t many of us left anyway.
They just need to pick a better guy for the white horse than General Smedley Butler this time. General Petraeus seems to be dictator of choice. It will be interesting to see how much integrity is left in the Officer corps.
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While choosing the lesser evil is not a very attractive
position, when we are sitting on a nuclear arsenal, it
is the only sensible choice. Refusing to choose it is
tantamount of allowing the greater evil to win.
We do not want the greater evil to get its hands on
ICBMs, really.
So, I will end up voting for Barack Obama.
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Forrest:
While your point is well taken, do not underestimate the ability of the “Beltway RepubliCrats” aided by Mr Bernanke to drag out their tightrope walk aimed at inflating their way out of misery. We all know it will end badly...just not when, but likely longer than we wish.
As for Obama should he win, I am hopeful that he may prove to be a genuinely rare item, that is a liberal/libertarian. If that admittedly over-optimistic thought be true, your scenario could make sense. If he proves to be another big-spending entitlement Dem all bets are off, espescially yours...deficit spending and soak the rich schemes for at least 4 years.
The sad fact is, the trump cards are held to a great extent by our foreign benefactors who are walking their own tightrope between holding depreciating dollar assets, the aspirations of their own rising middle classes and their continued (at least for a few more years) need for our markets.
Oh what a terrible, tangled web we weave…
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Now a Nobel Prize in economics is coming out with
the true cost of the Irak war, and the numbers are
grim.
Of course, that’s what happens when you think that war
can be fought on the cheap, or put on the credit card.
Of course, no word on raising taxes, which is what
anyone with sense would do (do not want to raise taxes?
do not go to war then, but any war that deserves to be
fought deserves to be funded, and the money has to come
from somewhere).
I am sorry for McCain, but anyone who thinks that
we can have both a hundred year war, and low taxes is
too clueless to be President.
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It’s reassuring to see that Mr. McCain has his very own Farrakhan in the form of Pastor Hagee even though Obama condemned Farrakhan when cornered while Mr. McCain claims to be so very proud of Hagee’s support. With this type of Armageddon-lust council, we can assume it’s bombs away.
One could go in any of a dozen bars in any metropolitan area one might care to explore and gain a better foreign policy plan from 10 randomly chosen bar flys than one might gain from the spooky jitterbugs of Foggy Bottom or preening God thumpers of the arena circuit.
Not that I for a moment am suggesting that the average unaffiliated sinner is capable of better council than our esteemed Holy Pop Stars or their K Street confreres. It’s just that at least the drunks have fleeting moments of lucidity.
But, none to worry, I’m sure that when the Great Bureaucratic Edifice has sodomized one and all to within an inch of their lives, the fleecing charlatans of the Mega Church will be there to help explain why we must swallow the pain like good sinning soldiers.....after, of course, the hat has been passed and noted in the house.
No wonder one in a hundred is now incarcerated within the lapsed Republic. With an epicenter of rubes like this, con men are attracted like moths to the flame. At least the North Koreans suffer empty stomachs while they put on those great compliant shows for their beloved leaders. Here, the citizen dutifully folds on a full stomach.
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