It is pushed in the media that John McCain is the foreign policy guy in this presidential race. This is in spite of the fact that he makes constant mistakes in this field. I'm not talking policy here for that can be debated. I'm talking about still referring to Czechoslovakia, a country that hasn't existed for well over a decade, in the present tense and -- much more troubling -- continually not knowing the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam. The "foreign policy guy" should know better. Obama does.
Today, however, let's talk policy. For months and months, Barrack Obama has been saying two things. First, we need to engage Iran diplomatically, knowing that we can't rely solely on the threat of violence to bring about our goals for this important nation in the Middle East. Second, our focus in the so-called war on terror needs to be in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not in Iraq. He has taken heat from the political right for both stances. President Bush compared Obama to a Nazi appeaser for his stand on perspective diplomatic contacts with Iran and did so in Israel no less. (One can always count on our president to show little tact and less class.) While McCain has hammered Obama on the Iranian issue as well, his chief focus has been on Iraq, his only real issue in this presidential election. Not only has McCain ignored the war in Afghanistan, he's said that it must take a back seat to our interests in Iraq. Now, however, both men seem to be coming around... to Obama's way of thinking. Political hacks would call Bush and McCain "flip-floppers." I'll just say that they've finally seen the light.
On the 15th, it was announced that President Bush would send an envoy to Iran to discuss issues related to its nuclear arms program, among other topics. This was in spite of the fact that the White House had always before said that it would never meet with Iranian officials unless they outright abandoned any nuclear ambitions. Now, it's going one step further, with speculation that the US will actually open a diplomatic section in Iran, one step short of a formal embassy. Mr. Bush, meet Mr. Obama... welcome to a year ago!
McCain has called for a "surge" -- his favorite word -- of troops in Afghanistan, three brigades worth in fact. However, he has no place from which they are to come... unless he's advocating a draft, of course! He doesn't want them to come from Iraq. We have no troops in the US to send. You do the math. Regardless, he's basically copying Obama's position now. That's change we can believe in!
Hopefully, this trend won't end here. This demonstrates that even Bush and McCain cannot be wrong all of the time. They just need to follow Obama more to be right.
17 July 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment