With Barack Obama narrowing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, in recent days both he and John McCain have switched their campaign strategies from primary to all-out general election mode. In 2004, this meant a lot of talk about partisan, red-herring issues like gay marriage and abortion rights. This time around, though, the opening round of debate has focused primarily on foreign policy, something that is actually crucial to a president’s duties in office.
It’s an encouraging sign for American politics, and I’m hopeful the majority of people can handle such a weighty topic. But the more I hear McCain’s delusional, neoconservative rhetoric — all of which seem to have been pulled, unrevised, from an outdated and misguided Cold War playbook — the more I fear what could come if this senile, ill-tempered kook is elected into office.
Not only has McCain butchered on several occasions the vital difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a distinction at the heart of the post-invasion sectarian violence in Iraq that has taken the lives of thousands of American soldiers, a group McCain has sworn to protect despite never stating how he would achieve that goal, but he has also abandoned his role as a so-called maverick, choosing instead to fall in lockstep with the Bush administration’s foreign policy of condescension, vilification, and alienation. Of course, this system has done nothing to curb the influence of terrorist groups or sure up our standing in the Middle East, thus making the United States a more vulnerable target than it could have been had a more robust diplomatic approach been taken.
In the last two weeks alone, McCain has revealed what would be a disastrous approach to international relations, a series of plans that would likely keep the U.S. at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come and, to the satisfaction of military contractors alone, start a few new ones along the way. To recap, he has taken an abrupt about-face on dealing with Hamas, the democratically elected majority government in Palestine, saying to do so would be “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.”
He has referred to Hamas, and implicitly the majority of Palestinians, as a “transcendent evil,” which, even if the claim were true, fails to accept the reality of the situation: that Hamas is the political wing chosen by the Palestinian people to lead their government and represent their interests; that the United States, through the tough-talk and thuggery started by Bush-Cheney and echoed by McCain, has only emboldened Hamas and other extremist groups that use violence to achieve political ends and speak of eliminating the state of Israel.
He has agreed with President Bush’s ignorant, historically inaccurate claim that those who wish to engage Iranian leadership through tough diplomacy, because the Bush policy of antagonizing Tehran has only strengthened fundamentalist rule in the country, are the equivalent of those who handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938. McCain followed this up by once again proving he knows nothing about the nuances of Middle East politics — remember the persistent Sunni-Shiite confusion — when he was unable to accurately tell reporters who makes and sets Iranian foreign policy.
Joe Klein of Time magazine confronted McCain over false claims made by the Senator regarding Obama’s expressed willingness to meet with Iran’s leaders. McCain has taken this to mean Obama would sit down with Iranian President, and easy-bake villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presumably because it more easily reinforces the idea that Obama is a hack who wants to appease a raging anti-Semite. But, as it turns out, Obama has never said this. He has said he would meet with “Iranian leadership” to negotiate with them on matters of foreign policy and their nuclear program. In Iran, the person responsible for these areas is not Ahmadinejad, as McCain continued to insist even after Klein informed him of the error, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know,” McCain said to Klein, referring to Ahmadinejad. “Go ahead. Or anyone who’s well-versed in the issue.”
First of all, anyone who is well-versed in the issue, to use McCain’s words, should at the very least be aware of the most basic facts of Iran’s political system, one that places Khamenei at the head of government and reduces the president to little more than a spokesman for the government with little influence on setting foreign and domestic policy. McCain is then, by his own definition, not well-versed in the issue and unfit to be president.
And isn’t the job of the president to inform the American people on the facts, correcting public misconceptions when necessary, and to not simply go with the flow when the flow is horribly and dangerously wrong? We have seen the effects of allowing a president to advance the false assumptions of the majority (Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida, was responsible for 9-11). By once again endorsing the misinforming of the American people, McCain is setting this country up for another foreign-policy disaster, one it cannot afford at this time in history.
But McCain’s crash course around the globe doesn’t stop in the Middle East. Just this morning, in a town hall meeting in Miami, McCain expressed his unwillingness to advance U.S.-Cuban relations. McCain insisted his policy on Cuba would maintain the embargo that has led to nothing more than an impoverished Cuban population unable to fundamentally alter its nation’s course from the ground up. Instead of easing the embargo in the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation, which Obama and many experts agree would provide numerous people with economic and social resources, ultimately strengthening the position of the U.S. on the ground and helping move Cuba to a more democratic system, McCain wants to keep things as they’ve been since the darkest days of the Cold War.
This has been the American approach for fifty years, and nothing at all has changed. There is no indication that the Cuban government is willing to make the “fundamental reforms” the right-wing insists are necessary before discussions can take place. It is time to try a different approach, to realize the benefits of a strong U.S.-Cuban relationship, to offer incentives and rewards for Cuban action, and to not simply stand tough, hands on hips, like a bully demanding Cuba’s lunch money if it wants to avoid a beating at recess.
Perhaps this best describes John McCain’s worldview, though: The United States must force other countries to yield to its demands or risk absolute destruction or global alienation. He comes from a family with a long military history, after all, one that stretches back to battles with Native Americans in colonial times. His grandfather fought in World War II; he and his father served in Vietnam; his own son is now a Marine who has served in Iraq. War is all this family seems to know, and the McCain now running for America’s highest office has shown he intends to use these kindred ties to shape his foreign policy, consequences be damned.
But not all American’s gleefully share in this legacy of war — at least those who are well-versed in the issues, a group whose numbers are increasing, according to most polls, as more and more people realize that not all problems have a military solution.
I desperately want to have an opinion about Fidel Castro resigning power to his brother, Raúl — it is, after all, the top story on every news channel and website this morning. It seems like a big deal, I guess. But a big deal to whom? The idea that Castro and Cuba and Communism are of great foreign-policy importance is so tired, so yesterday, so out of touch with the things that matter to those of us born in post-Reagan America. We weren’t brought up learning that The Little Island That Could was evil and desperate to nuke us at a moments notice. We were taught that the CIA is kind of a fucked up group, that the U.S. was just maybe sort of being a giant douche bag during the Cold War, no better or worse than the Soviets, just another asshole trying to win the take-over-the-world game, like