Monday, March 17, 2008

What McCain's Foreign Policy Might Look Like

With the utterances of "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" and "We'll be there for 100 years" one can only assume that a McCain Presidency would yield more George W. Bush style politics as well as similar ways of relating to other countries. Not only is this about the man in question, but the people around him. So what type of things have his foreign policy advisers mentioned thus far in the media?

From ThinkProgress:

“The [Iraq] war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. […] History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.” [The Weekly Standard 3/17/03]

“There’s been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.” [NPR, 4/1/03]

“Iraq already has confounded many Western ‘progressives’ who doubted that the Arab world could ever make progress. The bus may be rickety and it may have lost some passengers, but — guess what? — it’s on schedule toward its final destination: democracy.” [Los Angeles Times, 3/4/04]

“I think we ought to execute some air strikes against Syria, against the instruments of power of that state, against the airport, which is the place where the weapons shuttle through from Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas. I think both Syria and Iran think that we’re cowards.” [Fox News’ Big Story with John Gibson, 7/17/06]

“If we can’t leave a democracy behind [in Iraq], we should at least leave the corpses of our enemies. The holier-than-thou response to this proposal is predictable: ‘We can’t kill our way out of this situation!’ Well, boo-hoo. Friendly persuasion and billions of dollars haven’t done the job. Give therapeutic violence a chance.” [New York Post, 10/26/06]


Oh and yes, there is plenty more where that came from. So when voters go to choose between McCain and Oba the Democratic nominee, they better keep those quotes in mind.