Progressive World Review

        The Washington Post, in an article by Michael Cooper, reports today that John McCain is on a quasi diplomatic mission abroad in attempt to sooth the ruffled feathers of our friends and allies left by the Bush administration,

 … was more than just a Congressional fact-finding trip, or even a candidate’s attempt to appear statesmanlike.

It was also an audition on the world stage for Mr. McCain in his new role as the Republican presidential nominee. And it offered Mr. McCain the chance to begin testing his oft-stated hope that as president he would be able to repair America’s tattered reputation abroad by shifting course on some of the policies that have alienated its allies - in areas like global warming and torture - even as he continues to embrace what much of the world sees as the most hated remnant of the Bush presidency: the war in Iraq.

        McCain’s stance on global warming and torture may be an improvement over Bush’s but as the Iraq war’s number one cheerleader, does he think that anyone, other than his fellow war hawks, believes that U.S. foreign policy will change one iota under a McCain administration?

        While Bush has famously managed to alienate friends and foes alike on any number of issues, his number one blunder in the eyes of the world has been the invasion of Iraq.  This action, questionable at best even if Saddam Hussein had possessed any weapons of mass destruction, was universally condemned after it became clear just how little threat Saddam posed to anybody, much less the United States.  And the revelation of the atrocities being conducted at Abu Ghraib only compounded the worsening perception of America, once considered the beacon of virtue worldwide.

The precipitous decline in America’s reputation abroad - after no unconventional weapons were found in Iraq and the revelations about abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, among other milestones - is underscored by a series of surveys conducted overseas by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The percentage of respondents in Britain, America’s strongest ally, who said they viewed the United States favorably fell to 51 percent last spring, down from 83 percent before the Iraq war began; in France it fell to 39 percent from 62 percent before the war began, said Andrew Kohut, the director of the project.

        John McCain has championed this war from the beginning and even though McCain has been a vocal opponent of torture. His unceasing support of the war inextricably ties him not only to the war itself but to every lawless act of torture conducted on its behalf.

        But what is probably even more important is; what can we expect to happen if McCain is elected president?  “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”  While this remark by McCain was excused by the hapless and disgraceful national media as just a joke, this is clearly representative of McCain’s foreign policy outlook.  Contrary to what McCain has been saying all along about the Iraq war, the problem wasn’t how the war was prosecuted, although it was absolutely bungled from the beginning, the problem was that it happened at all.  Invading Iraq was just one more example of American hubris and desire for hegemony over the middle-east and his remark makes it perfectly clear that he would consider extending this mistake further by starting war with Iran. 

        Besides, even as a joke, what difference would that make?  Is a Polish joke any less racist for being a joke?  Joke all he wants it’s crystal clear that a McCain administration would just be four more years of the same, particularly to the rest of the world.

–Paul Wilden

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