As I am writing this, McCain has just announced the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. From a tactical point of view that selection will seriously impact many in the electorate who already have gender bias and particularly the Hillary supporters. By comparison, Obama in my opinion picked the worst possible running mate in Joe Biden. This may reflect the fact that Obama has too many old white guys advising him including former Carter NSC advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński.
The bulk of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has always been anti-war and has rejected the views of Biden and others who have blindly supported the national security garrison state concept. I remember fondly Senator William Fullbright who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1960s. He fought vigorously against Johnson who was a member of his own party. Fullbright showed the intellect and knowledge to challenge Johnson about the role of American military intervention.
Biden unfortunately makes foreign policy decisions based upon gut feelings as he did when he supported the Iraq war resolution when he of all people should have known better. All of we progressives knew in 2002 that the rush to war was not justified and yet Biden went along with the prevailing 9/11 hype of that period. That is hardly representative of what an informed chair of the Foreign Relations Committee should do. Had Biden argued the case against the resolution properly in 2002 in the spirit of Fullbright, the tragedy of Iraq could have been avoided that has essentially bankrupted this country.
In both the Biden and Obama acceptance speeches there again were the tired references to standing up against Russia to protect Georgia, a country Bush and Cheney have been helping militarily to further their military policy of encirclement of Russia to heat up the cold war again and further the interests of the armaments and oil industries. We progressives know that unless there is a major cut in the military budget, there is no chance for any meaningful change in domestic policies. Again, Biden's initial reaction to the Georgia issue has more to do with pragmatic politics than what is in the best interest of the United States. Biden as he did in 2002 is appealing to political interests rather than the correct fundamental foreign policy strategy.
Brzeziński was a disaster for the Carter Administration because as a Polish ex-patriot with such an anti-Russian bias, his foreign policy amounted to supporting the enemy of my enemy as he did when he supported the Bin Ladin group in Afghanistan in 1979 when the Soviets invaded that country. He also failed to act properly when the Iranians occupied the American Embassy in 1979 which by any standard is an act of war and should have been treated as such by Congress. These foreign policy blunders set the stage for Ronald Reagan and the 28 years of neo-conservative dominance that we have suffered through.
Does Obama think that these same people who failed us miserably in the past on multiple occasions will do any better in the future?
