The lazy days of summer have been anything but for yours truly, and thus I must apologize for my absence from this blog. You’ll probably have to put up with further absences over the next fortnight or so, as I will be traveling abroad and most likely will not have much chance for blogging. However, I’ll try to take some gorgeous travel pics and post them for your viewing pleasure.
I decided I needed to hop on here and make one quick post, however, because the irony of some of today’s political events struck me as being beyond even the normal ironic political material. It seems that John McCain has criticized Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin and his foreign policy overall. Specifically, McCain criticized Obama for not favoring the surge of troops in Iraq, asserting that while “our troops took the fight to the enemy” Obama was following a policy that would have resulted in “American forces…retreating under fire”. McCain also asserts that the surge he supported was the cause of the “Anbar Awakening”, even though many sources have shown that the Sunni tribal leaders began turning against extremists long before the surge began. In short, McCain is arguing for the forceful use of military power as a first resort in achieving diplomatic goals.
Meanwhile, McCain prepared today to meet with someone he called a “transcendent national role model”, someone of whom McCain says, “I have been a great admirer”. Given McCain’s recent rhetoric, you’d be forgiven for assuming that this great role model were a military hero, a strong national leader, or some other person befitting McCain’s stated policies. But of course, I wouldn’t be writing about it if it were someone that logical. Rather, McCain’s “role model” with whom he is scheduled to meet today (in Aspen, no less) is the Dalai Lama. Yes, that Dalai Lama (there’s only one, after all). I wonder what the Dalai Lama thinks of the use of military force as a primary tool of diplomacy…
