John McCain’s foreign policy judgment is questionable

[babylonsister]

John McCain’s foreign policy judgment is questionable
By TED GALEN CARPENTER and MALOU INNOCENT
Special to the Star-Telegram


A major theme of John McCain’s campaign is that he has far more experience in foreign affairs than does Barack Obama. McCain has now escalated his attacks by targeting Obama’s judgment as well — especially the latter’s pessimism about the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq.

There is little doubt about McCain’s lengthier foreign policy experience. But it is not at all apparent that his judgment is superior to Obama’s. Indeed, the record indicates that McCain’s own judgment is alarmingly bad.

Even if one concedes that Obama was excessively negative about the surge’s prospects for success (and the jury may be out on that point for months or even years to come), McCain’s own prognostications on Iraq have repeatedly been off the mark. He was not prescient about the course of the war: As senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee prior to the invasion, McCain predicted Iraq would be a quick and easy victory, and even told MSNBC he had "no doubt" U.S. troops "will be welcomed as liberators."

There have been recent episodes in which McCain has missed even the most basic facts about foreign policy. During a recent CNN interview, McCain said the surge of U.S. forces, which began in the spring of 2007, led to the Sunni Awakening — which started in early autumn of 2006, months before the surge was even announced.

Despite McCain’s multiple trips to Iraq, he still manages to mangle facts on the ground. As a member of a senatorial delegation visiting Iraq this year, he erroneously accused Iran of aiding al Qaeda and suffered the embarrassment of an on-camera correction by his friend and fellow hawk, Sen. Joe Lieberman, that Tehran was aiding "Shiite extremists," not the Sunni zealots of al Qaeda. Yet, during a Senate hearing a few weeks later, McCain committed a similar gaffe. He asked Gen. David Petraeus to confirm that al Qaeda was far more than "an obscure sect of the Shiites," and then, apparently catching himself, added, "or Sunnis or anybody else."

McCain apparently is not even certain about Iraq’s geographic location. He recently referred to a nonexistent "Iraq-Pakistan border." (The two countries are separated by more than 800 miles of Iranian territory.)

more...

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/842375.html

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. he tries to sound like Reagan but it is not working!

[babylonsister]

2. I was happy to see someone calling him on his judgment; so far, the

media has been silent. I hope to see more articles like this; everyone should be questioning McBush.

[flpoljunkie]

3. CNN's John King said both Feingold and Daschle said they would not lose any sleep if McCain won.

KING: There actually were quite a few surprises. You'll see the irascible temper of John McCain in this documentary, but you'll also see some surprising soft and tender moments.

And one of the biggest surprises will be two Democrats who have worked very closely with him, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader. They say yes, they've been on the receiving end of John McCain's temper.

But while both say they want Barack Obama to be president and they think he would make a better president, they both say Democrats are wrong when they say John McCain is too temperamental, that they would not lose any sleep if he does, in the end, beat Barack Obama.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/19/acd.02.html

What the hell is up with that? CNN is doing a special tonight on both McCain and Obama. I hope this a misinterpretation of what Feingold and Daschle said, because it is beyond the pale. McCain is worse than Bush-even more unstudied--a 'gut' decision maker.

Ed Schultz is right. McCain is a warmonger and his finger should not be anywhere near the 'red button.'

[babylonsister]

4. I'd read about Feingold, not Daschle. I'm having a

really tough time trying to figure out why they're going there. Makes no sense to me. And you can bet their words will be incorporated into an ad. :(

[flpoljunkie]

6. Don't they realize McCain's in thrall to neocon Randy Scheunemann who brought us the war in Iraq and

is itching to go to war with Iran! Nothing to me is scarier than McCain's apparent lust for war. I really do not think the American people would vote for more neocons running our foreign policy--if they knew it.

The NYT article yesterday was a good start, but without it being echoed in the rest of the media, it will be for naught.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/politics/17mccain.html?ref=politics

August 17, 2008
The Long Run
Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. “This is war,” he murmured to his aides. The sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled the windows, sending a tremor of panic through the room.

Within hours, Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Now, as Mr. McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief. Like many, he immediately recalibrated his assessment of the unseen risks to America’s security. But he also began to suggest that he saw a new “opportunity” to deter other potential foes by punishing not only Al Qaeda but also Iraq.

“Just as Sept. 11 revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand our freedom,” Mr. McCain told a NATO conference in Munich in early 2002, urging the Europeans to join what he portrayed as an all but certain assault on Saddam Hussein. “A better world is already emerging from the rubble.”

[babylonsister]

5. Here's another journalist criticizing McBush; maybe they're waking up! nt