I guess I'll start with John.

John McCain is a neocon. Neocon diplomacy is basically finding new ways to get the message out that the US is superior, which always goes over so well with the rest of the world…

The League of Democracies is one of his lovely ideas. Kicking out Russia from the G8 until it behaves responsibly is another. Using arrogance and hypocrisy to explain the unnecessary push for US ideological dominance is not an effective way to negotiate anything.

 The only reflection his experience has to offer about the failure in Iraq is that we didn’t send enough troops. What about why we went in? 

McCain has been 'the champion for the hard-line, neoconservative thinkers" for some time now, so I cant forsee that understanding occuring anytime soon.

  http://tinyurl.com/6lkk2l

John McCain and Obama are very similar in their "America has to rebuild our image and reconnect with our allies" talk but I don’t believe McCain can do that. Not only is he a jerk, but he hasn’t acknowledged the failure in (amongst other problems) the ideology that got us into Iraq and Obama has. There is some kind of recognition of our mistakes in the Bush neocon foreign policy with Obama which is another way of saying  " I don’t intend to continue with the same approach" on the other hand, John McCain is saying that he will but  he will be a better neocon than Bush.  He will be successful where Bush failed. With that in mind, I cant imagine how he could possibly “revitalize the country's purpose and standing in the world” witih more of what has ruined it. How will he be a better communicator of "the cause" questionable in intentions that it is, than Bush?

 http://tinyurl.com/3b66cb 

Neocon foreign policy is never-ending war, never-ending nation building and everyone knows that now.

I think it’s irresponsible, arrogant and idealistic to believe that it could possibly be good for any country in the world.

To have someone in charge that wants to continue down the same destructive path we’ve been taking the Middle East and ourselves for the last 8 years is insane. I don’t know how else to describe it.

 It will validate extremism and increase terrorism, and our country’s economic condition will continue to worsen, and the list goes on…

It’s not a necessary foreign policy; it’s not even remotely good.  

 

The Jigsaw to Armageddon Yeah, folks, you can bet the ranch: we’re going in. I’ve heard all the arguments from the nay sayers, so let that go. We’re going in. This is déjà vu time, for sure, as we look back on the months before Shock and Awe, when so many of us tried to warn the nation about the coming catastrophe in Iraq. But those of us who shouted went unheard and those of us who marched in protest went unseen. Yet in the end we were right on the mark. And so, we’ll try again. This time, we’ll set out five easy pieces of a doomsday jigsaw puzzle that easily can be assembled if you take the time to do so. As in any such puzzle, the separate parts might be interesting, but not significant in themselves. But once assembled, the full picture emerges, where none could be seen before.  Read the rest of this post...

Americans have a knack for psychoanalyzing their enemies. There are few histories of WW II or biographies of Hitler that do not go into his alleged psychopathology without ever having met him. But American Presidents are examined more in rationalist terms of: "what were they thinking?" GW Bush, for example, seems devoid of any empathy for the stress physiology imposed on American troops in Iraq-- most being mothers and fathers-- as a result of having been sent to Iraq, all intelligence blind, language deaf and culture dumb. PBS showed a segment recently covering a unit that lost seven troopers in an armored SUV to an IED, killed an innocent taxi driver and had to stand helpless as a large number of women and children were plummeted by shrapnel from a bomb, all in one day. Read the rest of this post...