More on Mac...

Okay, I'm in my office and have caught up a bit, so let me continue...

Foreign Policy

Richter's biggest beef (according to his texts) is with McCain's foreign policy plans. I'm not even going to attempt to explain Richter's views on foreign policy, other than to sum them up as "unrealistic" at best. However, his claim that Mac is simply four more years of Bush is unfounded, so I'll focus on that.

McCain supported the Iraqi invasion, and has never backed down from it. If Mac has a gripe about the War in Iraq, it is simply that Bush (via Rummy) followed a plan that called for the least amount of troops in the least amount of time. This is NOT how one wins WARS... this is how one wins BATTLES. The US has stated that it's goal is to establish, with full Iraqi cooperation, a democratic government within Iraq that is self-sufficient and capable of self-defense. Nothing else, nothing more.

We have, in this forum, debated the REASONING behind the invasion of 2003, but none of us have questioned the need to finish the job that was started. Now that Saddam has been removed, a stable, democratic government MUST be built or we are doomed to repeat the process again in 10 to 25 years, at the cost of (potentially) millions of lives. So, I won't touch on the WHY we went to Iraq, only on the WHY we must stay to the end in Iraq.

To leave now, with a democratically elected government that can't (by it's own admission) maintain its own security and borders against aggression from its neighbors, is leaving 25 million Iraqi men, women and children to the dangers and hardship of existence every bit as difficult as any experienced under Saddam and his Ba'athist regime. The lives of 3000+ American service men and women will have been wasted, and the lives of unknown thousands put at risk in the near future. At roughly $12 billion a month for the last 5 years, just the money and resources we have invested in this effort DEMAND that we see it through to it's most successful conclusion, to say nothing of the lives and hardships we have sacrificed since March of '03.

In WWII we saw terrible costs to the campaigns that liberated Europe from the Nazi yoke, specifically the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg where the lives of tens of thousands were lost to the firestorms started by British and American bombs... but we spent the next 15 years REBUILDING Germany into an economic and political powerhouse that dominates central Europe today far more effectively than it ever did in the 30's and 40's. The same goes for Japan, where we helped the Japanese people create an economic superpower that has rivaled the US since the late 70's in influence and advanced technologies.

Similar results are the promise of success in Iraq. Imagine an Iraq where travel between that nation and any other Western nation is free and unrestricted, where ideas, products and resources are traded, bought and sold to everyone's benefit, where the free exchange of ideas WITHIN a Muslim culture can be seen by the entire world as a functional aspect of Middle Eastern politics and culture. In only three short years, and in the middle of some of the worst terrorist violence the modern world has ever seen, we WATCHED 10 million Iraqi women cast their votes for elected officials for the very first time in RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY! Those people were voting their free conscience... something we Americans take for granted every November... at a time when simply walking to the polls was as good as a death warrant in the eyes of the militias and terror groups controlling much fo the countryside. THAT is why it is right, MORALLY RIGHT for us to finish what we have started. Hell, now that he has won the nomination, even Obama admits that immediate and total withdrawal of US troops is not a good idea... so why am I even arguing this point?

So let me discuss a more general picture of Mac's foreign policy as I see it.

In 1941, the US faced an enemy that wanted to control the world and its resources completely. We fought for more than four years to remove the threat of that domination by the Japanese and the Nazis, and we won because we, as a nation, recognized the threat those powers posed to everything the US stood for.

60 years later, we face a threat from radical Islamic groups that are not bent on the control and domination of our society and its resources, but instead they are bent on the DESTRUCTION of our society and all its people, to further their own agendas and twisted ideological nightmares. Osama bin Laden didn't want to be the ruler of the Islamic Republic of America, or the United Islamic States of America... he simply wants to stand over as many dead Americans as he can and smile as he shows the people he CAN influence (the Taliban, of all people) that he has the power needed to do the deed.

As long as there is THAT kind of threat to our society, I am MORE than willing to see $1 out of every $5 I pay in taxes going to the US Military through defense spending. I have NO hesitation in stating, quite loudly and quite clearly, that as a Katrina survivor and refugee who has received almost NO aid from the Federal government to date for his losses, I would forgo ALL future aid and assistance to know that the men and women who have sworn to defend this nation with their lives, if need be, are provided for in every way possible by the country they are defending. All the education or welfare spending this nation wants to do means NOTHING if the streets of Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, or Miami become the same blood-ridden plazas and bazaars that we see in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Beirut or Baghdad.

So, if Mac is in favor of a strong military capable of defeating an enemy on the other side of the world so that we don't have them blowing themselves up in our malls and supermarkets... I'm voting for Mac.