Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Peaceful President?

I spent ages yesterday watching youtubes of the vice-presidential election, and the spoof version thereof. I also watched the many little snippets of Sarah Palin interviews, and of all the crazy statements she seemed to make. The main ones in my opinion were
  • When asked about Georgia and Ukraines admittance to NATO, if she thought the US would go to war with Russia should they invade either of these countries(as members of NATO), she answered "I guess so"
  • Asked about withdrawal of Troops from Iraq, she spoke of how they would be re-deployed to Afghanistan to hunt down extremists
  • asked about breaching Pakistani borders without their consent in the pursuit of Terrorists, she said she believed they would do whatever was necessary to hunt down these evil Terrorists..
These are just 3 examples. They are all foreign policy/ National Security Issues. But they were the three things that came to mind last night as I watched the Presidential debate. All day I had in my mind how important it was that the American people vote for Obama. That Palin and McCain were evil war mongerers and Bullies, and would be dangerous people to have in the White house.
Then I watched the Presidential Debate from Tennessee.

I heard Obama talking about a lot of issues, but the ones that struck me were
  • his insistence that Georgia and Ukraine should be admitted to NATO regardless of consequences for US/Russian relations
  • he talked about a structured withdrawal from Iraq, but then a re-deployment to Afghanistan, to hunt down Osama BinLaden.
  • He said when asked, that The US should do whatever is necessary to attack terrorists operating in Pakistan, with or wothout Pakistani government cooperation.
  • He said he would hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden. He talked of how these poeple were plotting right now to kill Americans. He talked the old Fear talk, and I lost faith there and then..
Maybe you could argue its none of my business who runs another country. But up till this debate last night I thought we had a real possibility for change, a real possibility for a new era in American forign policy, but I was wrong. Obama is as belligerent as Palin or McCain, he just has a more polished way of saying things. So who they vote for now, I dont care. It doesnt matter to me who gets the tax breaks in the US, or who gets the best medicare deal, its their Foreign policies that affect us the most, and it seems to me that it will continue as before, regardless of who is in the Oval office.

2 comments:

Martin said...

Hmmmm.

I honestly believe these debate in their current guise are a waste of time.

No pressing of issues, no follow up questions. The idea with them is just to get out unscathed and not offend any of your target demographic.

I do believe Obama is an advocate for change, I don't believe the presidency alone is a strong enough position to drive that change.

Now, if the guy was a CEO....

B said...

what xbox said, the debates are pointless... are they even "debates" by definition?

a country of around 400,000,000 people has only 2 political parties and puts the majority of the power behind one person.