Genuinely Clueless

Let me follow up on this McCain gaffe in which he got confused and claimed that al Qaeda was getting trained and equipped by Iran before doing mischief in Iraq, before being corrected by his senate colleague Joe Lieberman.

Let's start by stipulating that if Barack Obama had had this slip up it would be everywhere on the news for the next week. Pretty much the same if it had been Hillary Clinton.

But this is really just the tip of the iceberg with McCain. In almost every discussion of foreign policy, not just today but in previous years, what stands out is McCain's inability to see beyond the immediate issues of military tactics to any firm grasp of strategy or America's real vital interests. His free willingness to commit to a decades long occupation of Iraq is an example, his push for ground troops to be introduced during the Kosovo War is another. His refusal, almost inability, to grapple with the political failure of the surge is the most telling one if people will sift through its deeper implications.

It is very difficult to draw practical lessons from history. But one of the closest things to a law is that military power is almost always built on economic might. Indeed, countries with sound finances have routinely been able to punch over their weight -- great Britain and the Netherlands during different periods are key examples. So fiscal soundness even over the medium term is much more important than any particular weapon system or basing right.

Then you step back and see the huge number of dollars we're pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. I don't think I've ever heard anything from John McCain that suggests he's given serious consideration to any of these issues, except as possible near term military challenges -- i.e., is China building a blue water navy to challenge the US, Russian weapons systems, etc.

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.