Monday, July 21, 2008

Who Needs Foreign Policy Help?

One of the arguments that the McCain camp keeps trying to make is John McCain is the far more seasoned foreign policy voice. Yet, Sen. McCain keeps making obvious and stunningly dumb misstatements that have to make you wonder about this.

He has made some small and understandable mistakes, he has referred to the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia. He has made larger mistakes like confusing Sudan with Somalia. He has complained about Obama's judgments about the war, and then adopted his position on Afghanistan. And he has inexcusably confused the alliances between shia, sunni, Iran and Al Quada.

After looking at these series of mistakes it takes an astounding amount of hubris to claim the right to lecture anyone about world affairs. In fact I would recommend that John McCain try to pick up a few simple world geography classes.


And it was McCain who owns the first big gaffe of the trip -- appearing to confuse Iraq and Afghanistan.

Asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer Monday morning whether the "the situation in Afghanistan in precarious and urgent," McCain responded:

"I think it's serious. . . . It's a serious situation, but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border," said McCain, R-Ariz., said on "Good Morning America."

Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do.


Yet another mistake from the self proclaimed expert.



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The best had to be this morning's "Iraq-Pakistan border" reference. Video is up on ThinkProgress now. McAngry is turning into McConfused.