On the war: I would find it hard for a politician to make the call at this point regarding Iraq, when you have a General out there whose name should be on the Roll for Civilization 5. Now that the Iraqis are calling the shots (and failing, for now...) this foreigner would strongly advocate one more year before troop reductions to no less than 75% for the following year.
A year from now, or a year from January when the next President takes office?
On McCain: His support for the tax cuts he once barked at makes me . I am also getting jives of protectionism as well as less of himself speaking the opinions. More to follow on that in the coming weeks.
He's fucking sold out, is what he's done. He's compromised his views on the tax cuts, the religious right, campaign finance reform, and for fuck's sake TORTURE. The man has no integrity left.
Can you imagine Barry Goldwater cozying up to Nixon the way McCain has cozied up to Bush? It's unthinkable.
Of course, the obvious response is that Goldwater got his ass handed to him when he ran for President. Integrity is a good way to lose an election, and nobody knows that better than McCain. Except possibly Kerry.
(Edit: The above rhetorical question presupposing general knowledge of Barry Goldwater is directed more toward the Americans in the audience; I don't really expect you foreign folks to be familiar with the maverick Arizona Senator who ran for President in '64. Hell, out-of-staters might not know who he was either. ...Actually, if I were to be brutally honest, I really doubt a random sample of students at the ASU Computing Commons would find many people who recognized his name, and that lobby has his fucking picture on the wall. So, all right, relevant Wikipedia links:
Goldwater bio,
1964 election. Guild, please at least skim those before you ask me to explain who he is.
...Actually, I'm going to add
Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater to my queue right now. That looked good.)
On Iran: The Generals understand this better than anybody. You have deployed your strategic reserve. Your nation does not have the capacity to sustain ground operations against Tehran. While some people may as a second resort suggest using Air Power to cripple Iran's military/nuke power base, they really should ask Clinton how that worked out in Afghanistan in response to the USS Cole, although chances are if they live in New York, they already know how that worked out in the long run..
Oh, I didn't for a second suggest that it would be a good idea or something that we could win. But then, neither is Iraq.
The question is, is McCain crazy enough to bomb Iran? And my answer is, well, he's crazy enough to joke about it.