[Vision2020] Candidate Issues--Foreign Policy

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Hi Paul:

I believe that you started this thread, but it petered out very quickly.  I'd planned to write a column on this issue as part of my election coverage, so I've added it to this thread.  

I would appreciate your comments.  The full complete piece--including discussion of torture, failure to reach moderate Muslims, McCain's Montenegro connection--is attached as a PDF file.

Read all of my election columns at www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/Election08.htm.

Nick

MCCAIN: STRAIGHT, BUT UNWISE, TALK ON FOREIGN POLICY 

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war"
--Winston Churchill, White House luncheon, June 26, 1954

Recently John McCain commented that the Iraq War was our country's longest military campaign since the Vietnam War.  As we note the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, where more Americans now die each day than in Iraq, McCain needs to be reminded, once again, he and Bush took "their eyes off the ball" in the War on Terror.

The most recent National Intelligence Estimate paints a bleak picture in Afghanistan. The government controls only about a third of the country and the populace is alienated by corruption, and a high civilian death toll due to U.S. bombing. The most dramatic example of corruption is that President Hamid Karzai's brother is the main broker in the heroin trade, which, by some estimates, accounts for half of the country's economy.

In an interview on Face the Nation (3/3/02) McCain said that we were making great progress in Afghanistan and that capturing Osama was "not that important."  That of course has always been Obama's main goal. In a 2003 news conference McCain says that Iraq was much more important than Afghanistan and that he predicted that we would "muddle through in Afghanistan"(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/17/mccain-03-afghanistan). According to a British commander, we are not even doing that; he says we are losing the war and we may have to negotiate a deal with the Taliban.

McCain proposes that the U.S. use the same surge strategy that was used in Iraq, but General Petraeus, in a talk to the conservative Heritage Foundation, argued that it wouldn't work in Afghanistan. As Petraeus wisely stated: "Every situation is unique."

In that speech Petraeus also stated that "you have to talk to your enemies," and it is reported that the Karzai government recently met, presumably without preconditions, with Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia.  If Bush had focused on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, instead of sacrificing 4,200 American lives and $600 billion in Iraq, we might have now pacified and rebuilt Afghanistan and the Taliban would have been defeated.

Even before September 11, McCain was urging war with Iraq.  On January 2, 2002, 15 months before the invasion, McCain declared "Next Up, Baghdad" on board the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. He joined many other GOP leaders in saying that the war would be "fairly easy" and that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators.  With McCain as his main cheerleader, Bush prepared the conditions for a civil war between Sunnis and Shias, which the Shias won to Iran's great satisfaction and influence in Iraq's affairs.

The Sunni Awakening, up to now drawing $300 a month from Uncle Sam, were mainly responsible for the dramatic decrease in violence in Anbar Province.  It is not clear if the Shiite government will continue to pay these men, or if they will, as promised, be integrated into the Iraqi security forces.  Recently the names of 3,000 Awakening fighters were submitted to the central government, but only 400, all Shias, were selected.  It is clear that the U.S. invasion and occupation has increased sectarian divisions rather than lessen them.

While refusing to talk to our enemies, McCain now says that he would not talk to a good European friend.  In a rambling, sometimes incoherent interview to the Spanish media, McCain would not commit to talking to Spain's Prime Minister Zapatero, with whom Secretary of State Condi Rice asserts we have "warm" relations.  

Earlier in the interview the reporters had been asking about new leftist leaders in Latin America, and they thought that McCain mistakenly thought that Zapatero was one of them.  McCain's campaign later clarified that he knew that Zapatero was the leader of Spain's government, and only reason for McCain's defiant stance appears to be Zapatero's decision to withdraw all of Spain's troops from Iraq. 

In a CBS interview Sarah Palin said that a war with Russia might be inevitable, but former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz warn that "this drift toward confrontation [with Russia] must be ended. . . . It is neither feasible nor desirable to isolate a country adjoining Europe, Asia and the Middle East and possessing a stockpile of nuclear weapons."  Kissinger has also urged that we enter into high level negotiations with Iran.

Israel is now talking to Syria about the Golan Heights and its representatives are meeting with Hamas.  Retiring Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has proposed that Israel give up East Jerusalem, West Bank settlements, and the Golan Heights.  Syria and Lebanon have just established diplomatic relations for the first time.  Our refusal to have bilateral talks with North Korea stalled crucial nuclear weapons negotiations for and only after Bush put aside his stubborn position was an agreement achieved.

In the post war period the United States has succeeded diplomatically because it followed international law and acted responsibly within multilateral alliances.  Bush has destroyed our reputation by acting unilaterally, refusing to talk, torturing detainees, hurling insults, and performing preemptive military strikes.

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