John McCain’s Ignorance is Anything But Bliss

Given the excitement over Barack Obama’s speech on Reverend Wright and race the other day, it is no surprise perhaps that John McCain’s stumblings and bumblings about al-Qaeda, Iran, and Iraq have gone without much notice.

It’s a shame, though, because everyone ought to see what a dangerous little nincompoop the Republicans have chosen, once again, to lead their Party.

Earlier this week, McCain, with Senator Joe Lieberman at his side, spoke to the press somewhere in the Middle East where McCain is currently traveling in order to demonstrate and burnish his foreign policy and security credentials. So, just like a real statesman, McCain strode to a brace of microphones hastily arranged in the desert, looked out at the journalists with steely resolve, cleared his throat suggestively, and said imperiously, “it’s common knowledge” and “has been reported in the media,” that Iran has been training and supplying al-Qaeda, with the latter then going into Iraq. The only problem with this is that it is incorrect. Iran is largely Shiite, al-Qaeda is Sunni and never the twain shall meet, or just about.

Luckily for McCain, Lieberman scurried up to the microphone and whispered into the consumptive nominee’s ear, so that the latter could say, er, I meant to say, er, that Iran has been “training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

Not a big deal you say, most Americans probably don’t know that Iran is Shiite and al-Qaeda, Sunni? Well, it’s a big deal if you are running for President. All the more so as this is not the first time that McCain has made this mistake (he did so in an interview with Hugh Hewitt). Just look at the trap in which George Bush and Co’s ignorance has ensnared us. More general ignorance about this region and its culture and the relationships of the various actors there permitted Bush or his braintrust, anyway, to convince folks that Iraq was somehow linked to al-Qaeda and the attacks on 9-11 (among the hoodwinked were lots of journalists and Democrats, sorry to say). Justification, in other words, for rushing headlong into a war that is politically and morally corrupt and from which it is difficult to conceive a quick and successful exit.

In addition to knowing little or nothing about Iran, Iraq or al-Qaeda, McCain has said himself he doesn’t know anything about economics. And healthcare? His healthcare “plan” consists of vague and wrong-headed musings about controlling costs and providing incentives for folks to buy health plans. In other words, McCain really has no plan whatsoever, just an anemic philosophy, no different than Bush’s, to continue to privatize federal healthcare by lining the pockets of private companies who frequently now provide health insurance instead of the federal government. Forget about increasing access to care, providing additional benefits, or taking any real steps that would actually reduce health care costs.

So if doesn’t know anything about foreign policy, economics, or healthcare care what is there, then, to recommend McCain to voters? Nothing at all. Hell, no one would even want to drink a beer with this guy. His incompetence in matters both domestic and international probably won’t prevent a large number of people from voting from him however. Just ask the current resident of the White House who, incredibly enough, is in his second term despite being ignorant and incompetent to such a degree that it is a wonder the man can tie his shoes.

We get the Presidents we deserve, I suppose, but I sure hope this time around we get something better than another know-nothing Commander-and-Chief who has no problem spilling the blood of Americans in a place about which he knows little or nothing and for a reason or reasons that have no basis in reality. After five years of war in Iraq and 3992 dead (the total as of the five-year anniversary of the war) Americans and thousands of Iraqis, 47 million or more Americans without insurance, and an economy heading off the rails, we simply can’t afford, again, to elect someone who doesn’t have a basic understanding of international or domestic affairs.