Well, My Friends, the press is my base. And a powerful one it is!

Does it matter? I can't even turn my television on anymore because of this campaign coverage. I mean, we face serious issues and we need a new strategy and a new vision for this country. And instead of the press educating the public and challenging the policies of the candidates, like the above, we focus on silliness. I mean wake up! I just want to live in a bubble for the next couple of months. I literally cannot take much more of this.

To Tanisha, how is this silly? This is a real issue to deal with as president. It is called foreign policy. With policies like this McCain could just make it worse for the U.S. ( people like Tanisha) and the world. Foreign policy affects the U.S. Just look at what the Iraq war is doing. Millions spent each week and here in the states, there is a recession. Seems people really don't know what is relevant or not.

To answer the final question: Yup.

Scary, isn't it?

A reaction from the grapevine

That John McCain is a presidential candidate shows just how far out of touch with reality the nation really is.

The facts will stand. No smoke screen from the White House propaganda machine will be thick enough to cover up critical facts. The United States of America attacked a sovereign state without grounds. An act of unprovoked aggression that has resulted in massive civilian deaths, destabilizing a global critical area of the world—the world's major source of all petroleum—thus it is a war that not only endangers our national security but the entire globe; It has given us the senseless death of our own soldiers, the total destabilization of the US dollar, and a quadrupling in the price of oil in relation to the US dollar, at the same time this war has given the alleged enemy, “terrorist and terrorism” easy access to a nation that was previously inaccessible to them. A consequence of the war has been an escalation in world wide terrorism while for Americans it has simply meant the end of the constitution as we once knew it and instead the feeble words of an airhead of president that has no business being in the White House—a court appointee who wherever he speaks is an embarrassment to the nation as his grasp of global and national affairs is astoundingly weak.

Our government is of such a nature that it cannot even be bothered with counting the lives of innocent civilians whose death are a direct consequence of the president's decision to invade. This nation of ours invaded Iraq on the weakest of evidence—evidence that was so weak in fact that each and every claim made by then Secretary of State Colin Powell before the United Nations was false. When David Kay announced that there was no evidence of WMD and no evidence of WMD programs in Iraq we had in essence achieved the goals of the war—we had proven that we were wrong, that Iraq had no WMD and thus at the same time proved that we had already lost the war because it was a war without justification. These sort of facts are what presently defines the United States in the eyes of the world—in the sense of how we look. (Which certainly isn't “Oh, Beautiful”)

John McCain represents the continuation of the Bush led lie to invaded Iraq. So committed is McCain to the Bush world view that he asks the American people to forget why we are in Iraq—to McCain the why doesn't matter. All that matters is what he calls “winning the war.” Because of this undeniable fact, McCain represents to the rest of the world, the unacceptable continuation of the flawed and failed policies of President George W. Bush. The utter ignorance of George Bush, his eight years of failure on each and every aspect of governance combined with the perversion of his policies have forced the US into a position of isolationism—because we are the only ones who have our warped view and in general the people of the world stand opposed to our actions—thus Bush is an isolated and rather pathetic figure who cannot perform any meaningful political agreements on the international stage. These Bush policies do not aid the nation in terms of “National Security” but rather do the exact opposite and have in fact left us so weak that we cannot attend to the economic destabilization issues that are crippling our own nation much less the damage this war imposes on the entire world—the Iraq War functions as a form of taxation without representation via the devaluation of the dollar which acts as an inflation pump on the price of all goods measured in the world market in dollars. Thus our military presence in Iraq is not sustainable in economic terms and that fact alone directly threatens our National Security and the lives of each and every American citizen in way that no gang of terrorists could ever dream of.

The fact is that the so-called Bush Doctrine represents a total misunderstanding of what constitutes American Nation Security and only an incompetent child like mind could have conceived of it. Unless this abortion of reality is crushed here and now then the very instrument of our nation's demise will be allowed to persist as the guiding principle of national security—that is what John McCain represents and his very statements in regards to Iraq point in a direction that will ensure our complete economic collapse and our demise.

John McCain like George W. Bush does not represent policies that will protect the United States of America. This is a fact. The security of the United States can not be served by the actions of unprovoked warfare—to which no victory can ever be achieved, unless the success of a perverted act is to become the objective and the symbol of this nation's heritage.

The very reason for the global forward deployment of our armed forces is built upon economical justifications, but unlike most business propositions the global forward deployment of our military has not been challenged by a single politician according to a quantifiable business question; Is it really the case that the benefit of having our military forwardly deployed is greater than the cost? That is the question of questions that will occupy this nation in the very near future when the economic reality of what we have already lost in the Iraq adventure makes its mark on the lives of each and every citizen of this nation—in the form of an economic depression.

Regardless of the outcome of that question, we cannot alter the justification for the forward deployment of the military as the Bush Doctrine proposes or else the very existence of our military on foreign soil will be altered in the eyes of the global community from being seen as “DEFENSIVE” in nature into being viewed as “OFFENSIVE” in nature and once that perception becomes solidified in the eyes of the world, we as a nation will have been transformed from the acclaimed protector of the free world and the ideals of human rights and democratic rule into its number one enemy. Because a military stationed throughout the world that operates on the principle of unilateral decision making and builds upon the principles of “preemption” and “unprovoked aggression” immediately represents to each and every nation on the face of this earth the primary threat to their own national security—because the troops are no longer on their soil to serve mutual security interests, but rather they are there to serve the interests of US and our interests alone—What the Bush Doctrine signals is that we cannot be trusted—the Iraq War is the symbol of we cannot be trusted and what John McCain signals is that it is our right to not be trusted. No path to tyranny is more clearly defined than the one we are on now.

Still that which defines American Power is not our military might. Our military might is merely an instrument of that which defines our true power. What defines our might are in fact those concepts embodied by the meaning of individual rights and the process of democratic rule—that upon which the nation was founded. George W. Bush represents rule by tyranny and the end of civil rights—any individual that openly condones torture, that belittles the importance and significance of our system of due process; that calls the destruction of the Bill of Rights as the Patriotic-Act is not just an enemy of this nation but is an enemy of the very meaning and symbol of freedom itself. It is the liberalism that arose at the time of the birth of this nation, a liberalism based on an entirely new conception of humanism as well as the sense of duty and responsibility of good leadership to ensure and to protect the inalienable rights of the individual and to see to it that government is by the people and for the people that our strength is derived—undermine these principles and you undermine the very heart and soul of the United States of America.

The grounds for the forward deployment of the our military as stated before are economical in nature. The logic is that since we are a nation of trade it is our access to markets that determines our national security and therefore to ensure that we do not get cut off from markets we have reasoned that the enormous costs of maintaining a forward deployment of the military are outweighed by the benefits of being able to prevent a would be opponent from cutting us off from markets. This logic could of course be contested. With the advent of President “non-elect” Bush that principle no longer exists.

In the first Gulf War Iraq's out and out act of unprovoked aggression against the people of Kuwait was perceived by not just the US, but by the vast majority of Middle Eastern States as well as the entire planet to be a threat to global security. Thus on the battlefield of Kuwait standing side by side with American soldiers were the armed forces of Syria (presently defined as enemies) as well as the armed forces of the entire United Nations and for the first time in human history the world stood as a unified whole against an aggressor—so pervasive was the threat deemed by the global community.

The construct of that war defines the only medium by which our nation can wage wars in economic terms. The combined will of the world offers a distribution of costs in such a way that a war can be waged without seriously undermining our true national security fundamental—that fundamental is the American Dollar. The dollar has been the chosen currency of preference by the world as a whole due to the integrity of the system of government that backed it—a system built on the principle of trade. The greenback is the fundamental unit of our power (in the sense of a measure) but given the despicable acts committed by our nation over the last 8 years, this preference could easily change. In all likelihood, the lack of American leadership in regards to its own economic obligations to the world (as well as to its own people) will force the economic powers of the world to collude on a generalized agreement to adopt that all goods valued in terms of the US dollar be evaluated in terms of a bundle of currencies and once that occurs American Hegemony will in essence be at an end—because then the dollar will simply be one choice of value among many.

Undermine the dollar and you undermine the security foundation of the nation—those actions that undermine the dollar must be viewed as direct threats to the security of the nation! The Bush administration has undermined the dollar out of shear folly via the Iraq War but also out of an obvious incompetence and a provably flawed understanding of basic economic principles—What John McCain argues is that we should pretend that this folly doesn't exist and thus follow the fool's path.

We live in a world where “money” counts and equally so are how we appear to others and in turn these somewhat feeble ingredients define the ethos of our will to stand for those principles that offer not just our culture but all cultures the will to face life and greet it with open arms—as a child greeting a parent; the celebration is to life itself. Consequently those attitudes of the state that undermine this celebration are by nature non sustainable in terms of human existence since they extinguish the flame of life. The ethos upon which this nation is founded are those inalienable rights of the individual and the pursuit of happiness—it is in this way we offer the meaning of our existence as being the celebration of life and it is this that in truth defines the first line and the last line of defense in terms of our national security—it is the belief that we are in fact free. Yet if to be free comes to mean that we sacrifice our freedom then we live in delusion as well as contradiction. That contradiction is what leads and blinds us today and that contradiction represents the greatest and most immediate threat to our national security—because it is in itself the very root of “terrorism”.

Someone please brief me on what John McCain's foreign policy expertise is supposed to be other than the extreme misfortune of having been shot down, crippled and tortured?

Scott, thats the question asked in the article that we are all wondering. I think his best claim would be his ability to freak on people and scare them into an unnecessary war, like how MacArthur kept threatening the Chinese during the Korean war till they invaded.

Zakaria says the "policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers" overturns precedent set by a half dozen presidents, both Democratic and Republican. I'm not sure if McCain is dangerous or just out to lunch. Perhaps both?

Duh! Is there any doubt? Of course it is both. He is dangerous because he's obviously bought into the whole neocon agenda: the "100 years" wasn't a slip of the tongue, you know. Out to lunch because the poor old dear has had too much oxygen cut off from his brain. As a sad result, that organ has atrophied to about that of a three-toed sloth.

The "insightful" Zakaria calls Iran and North Korea rogue nations. I wonder why. Is it because they have embarked upon a nuclear project? Let's not forget that the current world is very dangerous, especially when one disagrees with the hyperpower. Or maybe it is because these countries are seen as potential proliferators. But if we are going to blame somebody for proliferating nuclear weapons technology, then the US does not have a clean act. Who then "passed" atomic know-how to the Soviets? What about the Atoms for Peace project? It is true that the latter was civilian in nature, but there were ways to circumvent this.

Hey People,

You can whine and bitch all you want, but shortly after 9/11 you were told that this WAR was going to last a VERy long time. You were informed that you were either for US or aginst US..!!
Nobady can tell where this War will progress to, but be assured, the majority of americans SO NOT want a repeat of 9/11 and are willing to take alot to make it happen.
We may not support everything it take to WIN, but as a country, we will see it through, in SPITE of your objections..!!!

McCain 08'

Bill

To Nick: I appreciate your response, but you didn't read my comment or you quickly glanced at it. Because if you had read it, you would realize that I said: "And instead of the press educating the public and challenging the policies of the candidates, like the above, we focus on silliness." I was specifically referring to the fact that McCain's foreign policy ideas need to be thoroughly discussed and challenged in the press and was bemoaning the fact that the press has chosen to focus on peripheral issues to boost ratings (i.e. "silliness").

In all, my statement was saying "Does it matter?" about McCain's ideas, because you will only find serious discussion about them on blogs, and websites like this one, but rarely in the mainstream press, which is where the majority of Americans get there news.

So again, check the statement. Because my eyes are wide open in this election and I have a clear understanding of what is "relevant." My fear is that many others don't.