From The Dept. Of What Really Matters

By Cernig

While, it seems, the entire punditocracy of the Right wants to talk about whether the Rev. Wright is a crackpot (he is) and whether Obama is indelibly tainted by association with him (he might be, but then again both the other runners are just as tainted by their own sins of association) - Fareed Zakaria wants to point out something that really matters.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil�but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous�that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war. 

I pointed this out at the time myself, but I don't have the megaphone Zakaria does. He says it well, though. Unlike Iran or Venezuala, these two nations are actual major nuclear and conventional military powers. China holds most of America's debt tickets while Russia is a massive energy producer. Both hold UNSC vetos. Sidelining these two powers is plainly insane. I mean Rudy-Gulliani-looking-for-a-balcony-to-wave-from insane.

But looking further, writes Dave Schuler, any one of the runners planting ass in the White House isn't exactly an ideal future for World Peace.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are equally confrontational and interventionist. You can hardly interpret Sen. Clinton�s bellicose statements about Iran and her stump speech hostility to China or Sen. Obama�s stated willingness to intervene in Dar Fur or invade Pakistan in pursuit of Taliban and Al Qaeda finding safe haven there in any other way.

...It looks very much as though come what may we�re going to have a confrontational interventionist president and we and the world had better get used to the idea. So much for mending fences and restoring the U. S.�s lost credibility.

Now there's a depressing thought for a Monday morning.