Foreign policy? Go on the offensive: lose respect, lose strength

Here’s more or less what I would like to hear Obama say.

John McCain and George Bush simply do not get this: The United States of America is held in the lowest esteem by people throughout the rest of the world at any time in its history. That’s dangerous. McCain's short-sighted foreign policy is a recipe for long-term defeat. John McCain's defeatist foreign policy.

When the world no longer believes the U.S. is guided by its Constitution, when it believes we engage in systematic torture and deny fundamental human rights to prisoners of war and even to citizens, when it believes the government spies on its citizens without any cause to do so, and when it believes we will start a war using whatever false propaganda comes in handy at the time, it weakens us in the fight against terrorists plotting to harm us. There is war on terror, and we have to win it. If we are going to be successful in the fight against international terrorism – and yes, it’s is going to be a long-term process – we need the cooperation of foreign governments, including moderate Arab and other Muslim governments who desire a peaceful war and despise al Qaeda. It makes it harder in many ways for those governments to cooperate when their own people don’t want them to help.

That’s why McCain doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about when he says it would be fine if the U.S. occupation of Iraq continues for a hundred years: it’s dangerous for American security when the U.S. loses its leadership position. These are the hard facts we have to face, but that John McCain refuses to face: The U.S. will not regain its leadership position throughout the rest of the world until we figure out a way to end our occupation of Iraq.

A stupid foreign policy may be satisfying in some ways – like junior high school chest-puffing – but it is dangerous. It costs lives, thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of the lives we claimed we were saving. It could cost a city, as Newt Gingrich always wants to say.