On the lighter side, looking to 2012

Anyone remember the election going on? Bill Clinton does. And more importantly for his wife, there will be another one in 2012.

Many said that Bill gave a great speech at that DNC, putting aside the reported grudges over whether or not he used race as a campaign weapon in the primaries and the conflict over the topic of his speech. But he hasn't shown much support for Obama recently. In the past week I heard him on separate occasions go out of his way to make note of his deep respect for John McCain. I was able to find one of the instances, in this audio interview with the Economist regarding the success of the Clinton Global Initiative. The most glaring example is about halfway through the interview, where he says something along the lines of "Everyone knows the enormous amount of respect I have for Sen. McCain. And everyone also knows I respect Obama based on the talk I gave in Denver." Well, certainly not by that interview.

Darrell Hammond did a good job poking fun:

McCain, How Do You Sleep At Night?

"On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies."

So that quote is really from McBain, not McCain, but it would be pretty funny if the Senator shared those sleeping habits.

Oh yeah, this post is about a recent exchange McCain had at one of his town meetings regarding the presence of troops in Iraq. My better half pointed me to this NY Times blog article that defended McCain, or at the very least attempted to provide a more fair account of the aforementioned exchange than the D.N.C. (as described in the article).

McCain takes a pretty hawkish stance on this issue, essentially arguing that American troops and bases are needed around the world to ensure national security. I'd be interested to hear his reaction to the other side of this chicken-or-the-egg argument (the one Ron Paul espouses), that the reason our national security is threatened is because we have bases all over the world.


I find it encouraging that both McCain and Paul have consistent and honest messages, but I think the answer is somewhere in between. I agree with Paul, that our presence in their land is a significant cause of the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. Removing or at least dramatically decreasing our presence there is a perhaps the ideal solution.

I can't believe that it is the most practical solution, however. I believe our nation is stuck in a situation where it is extremely dependent on stability in the Middle East. I can't believe I just wrote "stability in the Middle East" and was not attempting humor. Maybe it's better (and easier) to say, we can't have Iraq become Afghanistan.

I continue to contend that although we need to see progressive turnover of responsibility to Iraqis, it would be a mistake for a candidate to promise and plan a complete pull-out when they take office. In the long term, I agree with Paul and disagree with McCain that we need bases in places like Japan, Germany and Korea. But the practicality of removing our presence in the Middle East is strongly tied to our nation's ability to remove its dependence on the petrol flowing from the region.

I invite comments from everyone, be it on McCain, Paul, any other candidate or the subject of our military presence overseas. I know I will learn more by discussing with you.