Opinion: The week in bizarro foreign policy
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John McCain, the great foreign-policy hawk who promises to keep Americans safe from overseas threats, campaigned yesterday like it was 1989. An excerpt of his remarks:
I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia. Apparently that is in reaction to the Czech’s agreement with us concerning missile defense, and again some of the Russian now announcement they are now retargeting new targets, something they abandoned at the end of the Cold War, is also a concern.
Some prime Soviet-era tchockes there: missile defense, the Cold War, an Eastern Europe dependent on Russia for energy and ... Czechoslovakia? Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent points out this isn’t the first time this campaign season that McCain has erred on the former Czechoslovakia. Here’s to hoping the GOP nominee holds steadfast on Poland at Yalta.
Barack Obama’s latest foreign-policy flub, meanwhile, is a bit more deliberate:
Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop ‘surge’ in Iraq, the Daily News has learned. The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a ‘problem’ that had barely reduced violence. ‘The surge is not working,’ Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province... Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an ‘improved security situation’ paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.
Click here for before-and-after screen shots. At the current rate Obama is lurching to the right, by Election day, look for the Democratic presidential nominee to call for invading Cuba.