A nasty little gaffe by John McCain highlight’s the fact that, despite a military resume and a lot of time in the Senate, his grasp on foreign policy isn’t demonstrably better than that of his opponents:
He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”
Now, the schism between Sunnis and Shiites is a mere 14 centuries old, so maybe McCain’s misunderstanding is to be expected.
Update And Obama capitalizes on McCain’s confusion:
Now we know what we’ll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.
I fear the average voter’s attitude will be, “I can’t tell the difference between all those Arabs either. But Obama’s preacher is scary. Isn’t Obama a Muslim?”
McCain’s misstatements express so clearly how it’s been called a war all this time, and yet — who’s the enemy? and why? and what would define victory?
“I fear the average voter’s attitude will be, “I can’t tell the difference between all those Arabs either. But Obama’s preacher is scary. Isn’t Obama a Muslim?—
Sadly ,I’m afraid you are correct,sir. Mission accomplished.
Most people may not think ‘nuanced’ unless it’s to let their own get off some hook,and it’s probably even worse after the Bush administration’s 8 yrs of their ‘I believe therefore it’s true’ mantra. We’ve all been pushed towards a ‘total accept’ or ‘total reject’ thinking mode because of Bush.So Pastor-chat will be on every political talk show from now until or if Obama is defeated. It’s just too easy an issue to pass up.But it’s way too early to call the outcome.He may still win it all.