We kind of know what the rest of the world thinks. Obama, hands down. Me too.
Here in Tallahassee Florida World, there is a conservative blogger on Tallahassee.com whom we know as ptfan1. He’s no right-wing fanatic, unlike many there who simply cut and paste or outright plagiarize posts from elsewhere. He believes the Number One threat facing the U.S. is terrorism. Me too. He believes we need to be willing to do whatever it takes to protect the U.S. Me too. He’s not going to be happy with some kind of namby-pamby “Can’t we all just get along?” response to terrorists. Me neither.
Where we differ is in who is best qualified to take us where we need to go. And I have to say, the reason I like listening and talking with him, is that it forces me to clarify my position. And my position is crystal clear at the moment.
Respect for the U.S. in the world is at an all-time low. We erased the sympathy the world had for us after 9/11 by invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. Never mind that the U.N. inspectors found no evidence of WMDs. We’re Americans, and we’re smarter. So we “found” evidence…since proven to be false…which justified our invading Iraq. And hasn’t that worked out well? Terrorism and Iraq don’t even belong in the same sentence.
If acting unilaterally on bad information is in the best interests of the U.S., please stop the bus and let me get off. If we can’t criticize the (undeclared) war and the President who got us there, then I must need to go apply for citizenship in Switzerland.
The very fact of electing Obama would send a message to the world that we are who we say we are. I believe that tensions would ease overnight. What we don’t need is another cowboy who is still fighting the Vietnam War. The NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman was in Egypt when Obama overtook Clinton in the delegate count, and his lunch companions were fascinated that a person whose father was a Muslim, and who has a Muslim name, could make it this far in the U.S. He asked, Could this ever happen here? That a Christian could make it to this point? And they were like, Are you crazy? Of course not. But Friedman said, Obama has restored the “idea” of America in the minds of people everywhere.
No way will the saber-rattling of John McCain accomplish that. It will truly be more of the same. We need more diplomacy and more aid, so that we quit creating terrorists where there were none before–like in Iraq. You know what? In short, back the hell off. We ought to admit we made a mistake, but I’m not holding my breath. We still have the biggest sticks, and I have no problem using them if we have to. But it’s high time to dole out the carrots. John McCain doesn’t seem to me to be a carrot type of guy. His repertoire seems to consist of sticks, followed by more sticks if the first sticks weren’t big enough (aka, the “Surge”).
