McCain just can't give up the thrill of a Cold War

Very well said by Greg Djerijian – in relation to McCain’s and Bush’s pronouncements on Georgia and Russia -- at the Belgravia Dispatch blog by way of Talking Points Cafe:

And now our promises are unraveling and nakedly revealed for the sorry lies and crap policy they are, with the emperor revealed to have no clothes, yet again. This is what our foreign policy mandarins masquerade about as they play policy-making, in their Washington work-stations. It's, yes, worse than a crime, rather a sad, pitiable blunder.

And one McCain would have us compound, I stress, again! An honorable man who served his country well, it is clear his time has past and his grasp on the most basic foreign policy calls we'll need to make in the coming years is very tentative indeed. He'll be surrounded by second-tier 'yes-man' realists and residual neo-con swill, few with any ideas worth pursuing if we mean to take the national interest seriously with sobriety and freshness of perspective. So let us help him exit off-stage gracefully, as he served his country with dignity when called upon, but let us not sacrifice our children's future to ignorants with deludely romantic notions of empire. Been there, done that. Indeed, we have a President who has announced a pre-emptive doctrine which allows us to, willy-nilly, instigate regime change when and where we deem appropriate. Who are we to lecture Putin now? What standing do we have to do so? And what parochial and self-satisfied myopia has us indignantly thinking we are some unimpeachable arbitrer of right and wrong in the international system after the disastrous missteps of the past eight sordid years?

I particularly think Obama supporters need to emphasize to the fence-sitters -- the ones who still think McCain's a semi-liberal, likable "maverick" who will be stronger on national security -- that policy will be made by about 5000 appointees. And who will we get as McCain's team? We personalize this too much. Would you now put all your money on the Jets instead of the Patriots because they now have Brett Favre?

As always, unfortunately, the rational analysis might sway 5 or 10 per cent of the American people who actually pay attention to foreign policy -- and three quarters of them have already decided for Obama. The central question is, how do you capture the idea on a bumper sticker to move a couple million more?