It's been said over and over again that foreign policy doesn't win elections. That might explain why both parties are so bad at it. 

Nonetheless, foreign policy arguments sometimes enter national politics, as they did the other day during the uproar over Bush's appeasement comments.

It was heartening to see Obama strike back at Bush and McCain immediately and with great force. This kind of response to attacks makes me feel a bit better about the election going forward.

The whole episode bring up questions about the differences between McCain and Obama's foreign policy. It's a great argument to have, as Paul Rosenberg explains:

In short, the allegiance to a super-hawk foreign policy is not something that McSame is going to change.  But given how unpopular Bush's war has become, it's something he willspin, and spin hard.  And this will cause increasing problems with the "straight talk" narrative-whether the press wants to notice it or not.  This is why Barack Obama is 100% correct to be welcoming a foreign policy debate with McCain. The more you hear about McCain's actual foreign policy views, the farther they diverge from the American public's.  It took almost 30 years–including the intentionally limited gulf War I and 9/11 to get the American public to forget Vietnam, and willingly embrace limitless interventionism again.  We are not up for more of the same.

If there is one clear issue where Americans agree right now, it's Iraq. We want out, and McCain wants us to stay in.

Looking deeper, one hopes Obama has more of a vision for his foreign policy than simply leaving Iraq. While deciding to talk to people around the world is a great start, there are a lot of details yet to be worked out. Our own Alex Thurston, writing for The Agonist, has one suggestion:

As we think our way through to a new US foreign policy, more suitable for the changing global environment, I would urge the creation of a high-profile diplomatic emergency response team for crisis situations abroad.

Intervening diplomatically is in our interest for moral reasons (we may help prevent bloodshed), economic reasons (festering crises in countries like Nigeria disrupt our supply of oil, for example), and strategic reasons (we have resorted to military action in Somalia and Afghanistan after ignoring crises there for years).

This kind of personal, intimate foreign policy shows signs of success already in the example of Kofi Annan's intervention in Kenya. It's something Obama should consider supporting publicly.

There's a lot to be hammered out between now and November. What other foreign policy ideas would you like Obama to consider?

Senator Edward Kennedy has been hospitalized after suffering a seizure. Kennedy is 76.

My thoughts are with him - he is a great American patriot. 

So what are we to make of John McCain's speech about what he hopes to achieve in his first term in office?

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced but not eliminated. U.S. and NATO forces remain there to help finish the job, and continue operations against the remnants of al Qaeda. The Government of Pakistan has cooperated with the U.S. in successfully adapting the counterinsurgency tactics that worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan to its lawless tribal areas where al Qaeda fighters are based. The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants. There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven.

The speech goes on and on about the amazing things that will be achieved by the end of his term, including an end to the Darfur Crisis, strong economic growth from lower taxes, fantastic new trade deals, an end to the world food crisis, workers who have lost their jobs are retrained for the new economy, public education has improved greatly, health care is more accessible and higher in quality, independence from foreign oil is around the corner, the borders are secure, and illegal immigration has been brought under control.

Whew!  So how will he achieve all this? Ummm — simply by being President it seems.  That's right — if you elect John McCain as President all you have to do is click your heels three times, wish upon a star, have him get his bills through Congress, and repeat after him, "Victory is the only outcome… Victory is the only Outcome…"  There may never have been a more bizarre speech by a presumed major party nominee for President.  Despite all of these incredible claims there are no specifics, except that he will work in a bipartisan way and end the "permanent campaign." How will energy independence achieved?  How will all those great new job training programs be created while we have these high, high deficits? And most importantly, how is stability and prosperity achieved in Iraq in just four years?  Simply by having John McCain take the oath of office — what, you wanted more than that?

There is an understood rule in American politics.  When overseas, U.S. elected officials do not criticize other American elected officials.  "Politics stops at the water's edge" is the mantra that explains this understanding. While this understanding has sometimes sometimes been violated, it has been done by lesser officials, not by the President of the United States.  But this morning, before the Israeli Knesset — as he is representing the citizens of this country before the elected officials of another, Bush said this:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Now he doesn't mention Barack Obama directly, and his press flack Dana Perino denied that this passage was about Obama, but the intent is obvious in Bush's words. Invoking World War II when comparing those who want to at least open up dialogue shows that Bush has no sense of propriety.

Wednesday night in a "Special Comment," Keith Olbermann pointed out that Bush actually claimed that he has given up golf to show solidarity with the families of those solders who are fighting, dying and getting injured in Iraq, Olbermann counters:

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain, succeeds you.

 The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next Jan. 20 will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:

When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at …

When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation …

When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.

This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!

That would also be good advice to W when he is in a foreign country.  Instead of following accepted decorum, he debases himself and the office of the Presidency by wallowing in the lowest kind of political interjection — comparing those on the other side to Nazis and labelling those who would meet with the other side to appeasers.  And he did this in Israel, where while they may despise those who threaten and surround them, they also know that they do not meet the Nazi standard.

As the Obama campaign explains in a released statement about Bush's attack:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power - including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

What success can George Bush point to that tells us — American citizens, or just citizens of the world — that we should ever listen to him when it comes to foreign policy?

Thomas Friedman has a rather provocative column in the New York Times today. Not only does it suggest the next president of the United States will inherit an on-going cold war with Iran over its nuclear ambitions and sphere of influence in the Middle East but it also suggests that in this war, the U.S., or "Team America", if you will, is losing. Friedman writes

For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?

Ehud Yaari, one of Israel’s best Middle East watchers, seems to agree.

“Simply put,” noted Mr. Yaari, “Tehran has created a situation in which anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take into account that this will lead to bitter fighting” on the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated strategy of deterrence.

I'm not entirely convinced that Iran could successfully pull off such a strategy, but Friedman's conclusion seems apt.

When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran.

The next president will most likely inherit the antagonism plaguing U.S. relations in the Middle East, but hopefully who ever steps in to fill Bush's shoes will have the foresight and gall to try a new (i.e., non-cold-war) strategy with Iran.