Did John McCain just make the biggest mistake of his candidacy?
Holly Shelves
August 27, 2008

Big Mistake, John. By releasing today’s ad about Iran, you just just revealed that foreign policy—an area that many think is one of your strenghts—is in fact your greatest weakness.

The gist of McCain’s new ad “Tiny” is that Obama is “dangerously unprepared to be president” because he doesn’t think Iran poses a threat to the United States or to (more importantly to McCain?) Israel.

McCain uses Obama’s own words against him in this ad: “Obama says Iran is a ‘tiny’ country, ‘doesn’t pose a serious threat.’” There’s only one problem with these quotes. McCain leaves out that Obama made these remarks while drawing a comparison between the threats posed by Iran and the former Soviet Union.

It doesn’t matter, though, Obama would still be right without the USSR context. Iran doesn’t pose a threat to us. They know that any attack on the US would be met with fierce retribution.

It should also be noted if Iran is a threat, it is because of Bush and McCain’s actions in Iraq. The Iraq War considerably strengthened the Iranian government—something “foreign policy expert” McCain should have known, and most likely did know.

But if McCain wants to open the door to foreign policy criticism, here are all the things McCain has blundered and/or is confused about:

1. We’ve already discussed this one. McCain thinks Iran is a threat to the United States. But McCain seems to be even more confused about Iran-- for example, he thinks that in Iran's system, the president holds most of the power. But that's not true.
   
   
2. McCain aggressively fought to launch the Iraq War, has flip-flopped throughout, has lied throughout, and has said that staying for 100 years would be “fine with me.” He is either confused or lying about Iraq, like when he said a few weeks ago that US troops in Iraq were at pre-surge levels, which is not true. The occupation of Iraq has been one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in our history, has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans, and McCain was one of the people who lied the American people into it. Let's not forget that the occupation has served to strengthen that Iran McCain is so afraid of.
   
   
3. McCain has said he won’t rule out pre-emptive war if elected, and has joked about bombing Iran and killing the Iranian people with cigarettes.
   
   
4. Despite being a prisoner of war, he has flip-flopped and thinks the US should waterboard its prisoners of war (even though the procedure can result in death).
   
   
5. McCain has scores of lobbyists running his campaign, some of whom have lobbied for some of the world’s worst dictators, including the government of Myanmar. One of McCain’s lobbyists lobbies for the government of Georgia. Many of McCain’s lobbyist masters represent oil companies and other companies that profit from war (which may help explain his hawkish foreign policy).
   
   
6. McCain agreed with Bush’s comments in Israel that diplomacy is equivalent to appeasement. This was another flip flop from McCain, who was for talking to Hamas before he was against it.
   
   
7. McCain has said “Hell, yeah” to the prospect of Dick Cheney holding a cabinet position in his would-be administration. Cheney has overseen some of this country’s worst foreign policy blunders.
   
   
8. Even though the government in Iraq has been calling for a specific timetable for US withdrawal for months, McCain has held for some time that they never called for such a timetable.
   
   
9. McCain has flip-flopped on Afghanistan troop levels, now wants to send more.
   
   
10. McCain hasn’t attended a Senate hearing on Afghanistan in two years.
    
    
11. McCain thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a border.
    
    
12. There was a litany of confusion from McCain following the recent Georgia-Russia conflict. First, McCain plagiarized parts of his remarks about the history of Georgia from Wikipedia. Then, he mispronounced the Georgian president’s name three times, called the conflict the “first serious crisis internationally since the Cold War," and said that nations in the 21^st century don’t invade other nations.
    
    
13. McCain flip-flopped on his support for Pakistan's former military dictator, Pervez Musharraf. A year ago, he rejected calls for Musharraf's resignation.

Let’s pray that the Obama campaign puts together an ad for each of these bullet points, making McCain’s most recent ad the biggest mistake of his campaign.

There’s one more myth that needs to be put to bed right now: the myth that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has “threatened to eliminate Israel.” McCain mentioned this common misunderstanding in his latest ad, and it is constantly trumpeted by government officials and the corporate media.

Ahmadinejad never “threatened” to wipe Israel off the map; never “called for destruction of” Israel. This misunderstanding was generated by Iran’s own press service, who mis-translated Ahmadinejad’s phrase as “the occupying regime must be wiped off the map.” It’s an unfortunate mistranslation, because it may well start a war.

Those who are more familiar with Farsi-English translation have translated this more accurately: “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

These two statements are much different. You could hardly interpret the latter translation as a threat “to eliminate Israel,” as McCain puts it. This is a wish that the government in Israel with eventually collapse—not an indication that he intends to “wipe” the entire population of Israel off the map.