Iraq and Afghanistan: John McCain

“We have succeeded in Iraq. We are winning,” said John McCain in an interview with Katie Couric.

“[W]e will come home in victory…[A]t enormous sacrifice, after four years, nearly four years of failed strategy, we have succeeded. And our troops will come home with honor. And we won’t be defeated. And there won’t be chaos in the region. There won’t be increased Iranian influence in the region. And it will have a bearing on what happens in Afghanistan, as well as the entire region of the world,” he continued.

And flowers will bloom in the middle of winter and butterflies will fly through rainbows, and… Wait, we already did the environmental policy primer, this isn’t global warming, it’s John McCain’s fairyland fantasy about a happy ending to war.

According to McCain’s website: “From June 2007 through March 2008, sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq was reduced by 90 percent. Civilian deaths and deaths of coalition forces fell by 70 percent.”

While the statistics on ethnic violence are difficult to verify in war zones, there is no doubt that violence has decreased.

A point for McCain. Or is it?

McCain insists that the surge, which he backed from the beginning unlike his arugula-munching opponent, was responsible for the increase in happy sunshine in Iraq.

CNN Security Analyst Peter Bergen disagrees: “…[B]oth the Democrats and the Republicans have been overemphasizing the surge. If it was just about the surge, the violence would be back up again because the surge is over.”

McCain maintains that military might, not diplomatic chats over tea, is the best way to resolve the situation in Iraq.

“…In the 1,400-word Iraq policy proposal on the McCain campaign’s website, there is not a single mention of the word diplomacy,” pointed out one blogger (our search of McCain’s site confirmed the charge).

What’s there to talk about anyway? According to McCain, we’ve already won the war in Iraq. That just leaves one little problem left to solve.

“Afghanistan is very tough. And there’s a number of great challenges there. And we have to employ the same strategy there that succeeded in Iraq. And we can succeed there… And if we hadn’t succeeded in Iraq, then the complications would have been incredibly more severe. And the chances of succeeding in Afghanistan would have been greatly diminished. Now that we’ve succeeded in Iraq, obviously, we will be freeing up troops to go to Afghanistan. And we will urge our NATO allies to send more troops and be more involved as well. We can succeed.”

This sounds like a self-affirmation we might do in front of the mirror: “No, I totally do not look fat in this dress.”

But just because we tell ourselves something is true, doesn’t make it so. Sometimes, that dress just don’t fit.

The real question is, what do the terrorists, I mean Iraqis, think:

“No opinion polls have been conducted to see which of the… candidates… is viewed most favorably by Iraqis,” said our favorite Iraqi neocon, Omar Fadhil. “If I were to try to predict their feelings, I’d start by restating the fact that most Iraqis are concerned first and foremost about their living conditions — economy, security, water, electricity — and they care primarily about coming up with solutions to these problems.”

Iraq and Afghanistan: Barack Obama

He’s a man with a plan. In fact, he’s a man with many plans. He’s got a plan for everything. If you don’t believe us, just check his website. You’ve never seen so many plans in your life. It’s like overly enthusiastic New Year’s resolutions. But instead of ‘lose 20 pounds, quit smoking and stop dating losers,’ Obama wants to ‘end the war in Iraq, defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and beyond.’

Unfortunately, not all plans come to fruition (we really did try to quit smoking and, for a little while, stopped returning calls from that guy who still lives with his mom). Maybe if we’d come up with a time line or some clever talking points…

Obama is a step ahead of us.

“Obama’s plan… called for the remaining combat brigades to be pulled out at a brisk pace of about one per month, along with a strategic shift of resources and attention away from Iraq and toward Afghanistan. At that rate, all combat troops would be withdrawn in sixteen months,” reported George Packer in The New Yorker.

But ending a war is a little harder than getting out of a bad relationship.

Packer continued:

“In hindsight, it was a mistake…for Obama to offer such a specific timetable…At the start of 2007, no one in Baghdad would have predicted that blood-soaked neighborhoods would begin returning to life within a year. The improved conditions can be attributed, in increasing order of importance, to President Bush’s surge, the change in military strategy under General David Petraeus, the turning of Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda, the Sadr militia’s unilateral ceasefire, and the great historical luck that brought them all together at the same moment”

Obama vehemently opposed the surge in troops, but signs of this stance are nowhere to be found on his website. The LA Times reported that anything reflecting his opposition to the troop surge was removed from his site in July.

Dude, I totally de-friended that guy on Facebook. It’s almost like we never really went out.

Not true for Obama, who has faced continued criticism for his anti-surge stance.

Obama recently had to play ball with the poster boy of the unbiased media, Bill O’Reilly:

OBAMA: …I think that there’s no doubt that the violence is down… I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated, by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters…O’REILLY: But if were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

OBAMA: Well, look –

O’REILLY: No, no, no, no.

OBAMA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no –

O’REILLY: If it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge.

OBAMA: No, no, no, no. Hold on.

O’REILLY: You and Joe Biden, no surge…

OBAMA: Bill, what I said is — I’ve already said it succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

O’REILLY: Right. So why can’t you say, “I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge”?

OBAMA: Because there’s an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We have reduced the violence –

O’REILLY: Yeah.

OBAMA: — but the Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility, and we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 to $12 billion a month.

So he was wrong about the surge, or maybe the surge just got lucky, as Packer suggested. In any case, Obama is sticking with his plan for now.

“Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war.”

Obama still has the timeline for withdrawal up on his website and says that the situation will be solved with less fighters and more talkers.

“[W]e cannot impose a military solution on a civil war between Sunni and Shiite factions. The best chance we have to leave Iraq a better place is to pressure these warring parties to find a lasting political solution.”

He says that he will not consider building any permanent bases in Iraq and that we should redirect our attention to Afghanistan, where terrorist roots “run deepest.”

Obama wants to work with NATO allies in Afghanistan and use “sustained diplomacy to isolate the Taliban.”

Let’s see if he can follow through on his New Year’s resolutions.

Trade: John McCain

John McCain strongly supports free trade. As stated on his website, McCain “believes that globalization is an opportunity for American workers today and in the future” and that “the U.S. should engage in multilateral, regional and bilateral efforts to reduce barriers to trade, level the global playing field and build effective enforcement of global trading rules.”

Tell that to unemployed autoworkers in Michigan.

McCain has lent his support to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and to continued U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

McCain acknowledges that “globalization will not automatically benefit every American” and suggests that to combat trade’s negatives we “must prepare the next generation of workers by making American education worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves.”

There is a strong argument to be made against protectionism, especially when it comes to American farm subsidies. But unless free trade is backed by a real commitment to retraining workers and providing our children with a 21st century education, these lower trade barriers may add economic distress to our already struggling working and middle classes.

Unfortunately, McCain’s education plan is hapless. It is clear from his speeches and his website that McCain does not care much for the topic of education and has no innovative policies to help prepare our population for the increased competition that a global economy will bring.

As we are currently witnessing, deregulation can lead to unintended consequences. Corporations are in the game to maximize profit, not to create a happy world for all of God’s children. Being a responsible citizen necessarily comes second.

John McCain has stated his position against strengthening labor and environmental controls in our trade agreements. Although this is “good for business” in the short term, it may harm America in the long run. Exploited foreign workers could end up seeing us as the big bad America that ruined their lives and polluted their countries.

Sweet! Al-Qaeda 2.0.

Let’s be selfish here. American businesses and workers are important, and so is the American reputation. In the long run, if American employers treat foreign workers fairly and treat the developing world’s back yard as their own, the gratitude we receive for being a decent global citizen may make up for the short term profit sacrificed. And it may keep a few more jobs at home.

As McCain himself has noted, “The global economy is here to stay.” Let’s make it something we can all live with.

Trade: Barack Obama

Barack Obama is generally skeptical about free trade. He is not against it per se. He has noted that “globalization is here. And we should be trading around the world. We don’t want to just be standing still while the rest of the world is out there taking the steps that it needs to in order to expand trade.” That said, Obama is not always a fan of our free trade agreements. He believes that we set up our trade agreements in the wrong way.

As a senator, he voted yes to a free trade agreement with Oman, but voted no to the trade agreement with Colombia.

This is definitely too confusing for our “with ‘em or against ‘em” news culture.

Obama claims that he has always had his doubts about NAFTA. He argues that it does not contain enough labor and environmental regulations to protect the American worker.
In his March 3rd debate with Senator Hillary Clinton, he pledged that as president, he would “make sure that we renegotiate” the NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico and “should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.”

Obama’s call to renegotiate NAFTA is largely unpopular outside of the Rust Belt. Our good friends at Foreign Policy magazine think Obama’s push to renegotiate is among his 10 Worst Foreign Policy ideas. They argue that:

“Trade agreements take years to negotiate, and Mexico and Canada would almost certainly seek new concessions of their own in a new round. Obama is right to argue that more economic development in Mexico will lower illegal immigration; he’s wrong to think that bashing NAFTA is the right way to address the Rust Belt’s economic woes. Happily, since the Ohio primary, Obama has backed off his harshest criticisms of the agreement.”

However, Obama appears undeterred. After last year’s toy recall and medicine scare Obama reiterated his stance.

“[A]s president of the United States, I intend to make certain that every agreement that we sign has the labor standards, the environmental standards and the safety standards that are going to protect not just workers, but also consumers. We can’t have toys with lead paint in them that our children are playing with. We can’t have medicines that are actually making people more sick instead of better because they’re produced overseas.”

However, Obama has ideas that are palatable to big business. He wants to invest in infrastructure and education to make America more competitive in the global economy.

But over the course of this election, Obama’s message on trade has been largely populist and aimed at disgruntled workers in Michigan and Ohio.

This scares the business people of America.

If Obama wants support from the business class in his bid to become commander-in-chief of the world’s biggest corporation, he might have to better articulate his support for free market capitalism.

Remember, it’s the economy, stupid. Business people are voters too.

Check out the foreign policy primer on Immigration and International Diplomacy, the one on Energy and Environmental Policy and the AIDS crisis and the one on National Security and Nuclear Proliferation.

Posted September 17, 2008 | 09:10 AM (EST)

Obama, McCain on National Security and Nuclear Proliferation

Over the course of this week, OffTheBus is running a primer on some of the most important foreign policy issues the next president will face. The primer can act as a guide to how candidates Barack Obama and John McCain stand on each issue. Check out the links for more information on these issues. Today, the primer looks at where Obama and McCain stand on national security and nuclear proliferation.

Read more at the Huffington Post or here after the jump…

National Security: Barack Obama

You can learn a lot about the candidates by perusing their websites. Not only by examining their policies, but also by analyzing the way they break down the issues. For example, Barack Obama’s take on National Security has two separate but complimentary components. He argues that we must create a 21st Century Military for America while simultaneously Protecting our Homeland.

On the military front, Barack Obama argues that our military is overstretched. Last summer he noted that “the Pentagon cannot certify a single army unit within the United States as fully ready to respond in the event of a new crisis or emergency beyond Iraq” and that “88 percent of the National Guard is not ready to deploy overseas.” To mitigate this problem, he proposes that “we should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines.”

It is unclear what Obama will do to incentivize nearly 90,000 new recruits. The Bush Administration seems to have already tried everything.

Fortunately, Obama realizes that “enhancing our military will not be enough.” Perhaps most presciently, Obama sees that in the 21st Century there will be new and unconventional threats to our security. These threats will necessitate “securing loose weapons and nuclear materials from terrorists; working to stop ethnic killing and genocide in Africa; and investing in our ability to combat epidemic diseases like avian flu that can be deadly at home and sew instability abroad.”

Obama might want to give some thought to the Global Food Crisis, and the Global Water Crisis. Some conflicts begin because of alleged WMDs. Others occur because people are simply hungry.

On the home front, Obama advocates

“spending homeland security dollars on the basis of risk…[by] investing more resources to defend mass transit, closing the gaps in our aviation security by screening all cargo on passenger airliners and checking all passengers against a comprehensive watch list, and upgrading port security by ensuring that cargo is screened for radiation.”

Unlike George W. Bush and Heckuva Job Brownie, Obama realizes that while terrorism remains our greatest security threat, it is far from our only one. By deploying more and better trained operatives and diplomats abroad while protecting our chemical plants and improving our infrastructure at home, Obama aims to proactively protect our country.

That sounds more reassuring than duct tape.

National Security: John McCain

John McCain is a tough guy when it comes to national security.

His website highlights his extensive national security priorities: Strengthen our military. Fight against violent Islamic extremists and terrorist tactics. Create effective missile defense. Increase the size of the American military. Modernize the Armed Services. Engage in smarter defense spending. Give more support to our military personnel and our veterans.

That’s a lot of guns.

Although he never mentions it on his website, John McCain admitted in March of this year that “prevailing in this struggle [against Islamic terrorism] will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities.”

That’s a little better.

In case you haven’t heard, McCain is a former POW, and thus is anti-torture. Instead of allowing banned torture techniques to creep into his continued War on Terror, McCain aims to “create a new specialty in strategic interrogation” within the military “in order to produce more interrogators who can obtain critical knowledge from detainees by using advanced psychological techniques, rather than the kind of abusive tactics properly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.” Unfortunately McCain hasn’t always been this clear as to what should and shouldn’t be prohibited.

In order to double down on the successes of the CIA, McCain also proposes the creation of a new intelligence agency, which would be patterned “after the erstwhile Office of Strategic Services.” The original Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a spy agency created after World War II and was the precursor to today’s CIA. McCain insists that a “modern-day OSS could draw together specialists in unconventional warfare, civil affairs, and psychological warfare; covert-action operators; and experts in anthropology, advertising, and other relevant disciplines from inside and outside government.”

If you wonder why they aren’t doing all of these things right now over at the CIA (or in the Department of Homeland Security) you are out of luck. If we explain it to you, we’ll have to kill you.

Actually, it is impossible to know what McCain has in mind regarding this new organization, as he has yet to publish any further information on his idea. US News and World Report has noted that “the original OSS was a freewheeling organization of intelligence pioneers who operated with little oversight and whose primary mission was conducting sabotage operations in war-torn Europe.”

Because clearly what the world needs now is more state-sponsored sabotage.

P.S. If you have been keeping score, so far we have uncovered two entirely new governmental organizations that John McCain wants to create from scratch: the OSS and a League of Democracies. So much for the party of small government.

Nuclear Proliferation: Barack Obama

Obama seems genuinely concerned about nuclear proliferation. He cosponsored the Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act of 2007, currently pending in the Senate. (An in-depth analysis of the bill can be found on Nukes on a Blog.)

However, his resistance to nuking the terrorists got him branded him as ‘softie’ during the presidential primaries.

“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance involving civilians,” said Obama when asked whether he supported nuking Osama bin Laden.

Now that he’s battling a former military man for Commander-in-Chiefdom, Obama is trying to sound tough, while still appealing to those hippie anti-nuclear annihilation types in his base. Obama says that he’ll maintain “a strong deterrent” as long as other nations possess the bomb, but that he will stop developing new nuclear weapons and will “work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert.”

Obama calls the spread of nuclear weapons and the risk that terrorists will get their hands on the bomb “the most urgent threat to the security of America and the world…The explosion of one such device would bring catastrophe, dwarfing the devastation of 9/11 and shaking every corner of the globe.”

More specifically, Obama said in 2005 that stockpiles of weapons in the former Soviet Union represented the biggest threat to US security. He wants to make securing these stockpiles a priority during his presidency.

“As President, I will lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years…we should also negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material,” Senator Obama remarked to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

He also, of course, wants to keep Iran and North Korea from getting the bomb, and he hopes to globalize the ban on intermediate-range missiles.

Obama says that his ultimate goal is a world free of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Proliferation: John McCain

John McCain has had several opportunities to vote on nuclear disarmament bills since he was first elected to Senate in 1986.

He voted in favor of a treaty to safeguard nuclear weapons materials in former Soviet States in 1992, and in favor of an arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia in 1993. But he voted against ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1999.

McCain says he might think about rethinking the treaty if elected: “As president I will pledge to continue America’s current moratorium on testing, but also begin a dialogue with our allies, and with the U.S. Senate, to identify ways we can move forward to limit testing…This would include taking another look at the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to see what can be done to overcome the shortcomings that prevented it from entering into force. I opposed that treaty in 1999, but said at the time I would keep an open mind about future developments.”

So McCain has an open mind about considering steps to prevent total nuclear annihilation. That’s promising.

McCain stresses that the United States needs to continue to deploy a nuclear deterrent, and says he only supports the development of new nuclear weapons that are “absolutely essential” to maintaining that deterrent.

On his website, McCain says that he wants greater cooperation between Russia and the United States on “early warning data and prior notification of missile launches.” On a side note, his running mate recently said that she would support going to war with Russia if Georgia joined NATO. That might put a little damper on this planned cooperation.

Unlike the softy Democrats, McCain keeps up his tough-guy military image and wants everyone to know he’s not afraid to push the button.

“It’s naive to say that we will never use nuclear weapons,” commented Senator McCain at a 2007 Republican Debate.

Check out the foreign policy primer on Immigration and International Diplomacy, and the one on Energy and Environmental Policy and the AIDS crisis.

Posted September 16, 2008 | 09:19 AM (EST)

McCain, Obama on Energy, the Environment and AIDS

Over the course of this week, OffTheBus is running a primer on some of the most important foreign policy issues the next president will face. The primer can act as a guide to how candidates Barack Obama and John McCain stand on each issue. Check out the links for more information on these issues. Today, the primer looks at where Obama and McCain stand on energy and environmental policy and the AIDS crisis.

Read more on the Huffington Post or after the jump….

Energy and Environmental Policy: Barack Obama

Both Obama and McCain support a ‘cap-and-trade’ solution to carbon emissions. Obama says he will implement a system of carbon credits, in which units of pollution will be auctioned and proceeds will go to clean energy investments and “other transition relief for families.” Despite his cryptic language (by transitional relief, he means he wants to provide tax breaks to consumers to reduce the impact of rising fuel prices), Obama has repeatedly expressed his commitment to reducing carbon emissions. He also hopes to wean the US off of Venezuelan and Gulf oil by the year 2010, in the interest of national security.

“We should push for binding and enforceable commitments to reduce emissions by the nations which pollute the most – the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, and India together account for nearly two-thirds of current emissions,” remarked Senator Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in April, 2007.

Obama is a big fan of fueling cars with ethanol. Foreign Policy Magazine calls this one of Obama’s 10 Worst Ideas:

“World Bank economist Daniel Mitchell blames biofuels, including ethanol, for a 75 percent increase in global food prices since 2002 that has led to economic distress and rioting in such countries as Haiti, Egypt, and Somalia… A recent study published in Science demonstrated that the farmland needed to grow corn for ethanol results in deforestation on a massive scale, negating any benefit the reduction in carbon emissions might have. So why does the senator support such a wasteful and damaging subsidy, even voting for the recent farm bill’s billions in pork for ethanol producers? “[B]ecause Illinois … is a major corn producer,” he said in April. At least he’s honest.”

Early in his campaign, Obama spoke in support of a bill promoting fuel derived from coal to power cars, but he later said that he would only support coal-to-liquid fuels if the technology was perfected to reduce carbon emissions. Obama’s cheer for coal was noted as another one of his 10 worst ideas, “Coal-to-liquid fuels produce nearly twice the greenhouse gases of ordinary petroleum.” The coal issue seems to be off the table for now.

Energy and Environmental Policy: John McCain

McCain’s ‘cap-and-trade’ proposal is similar to Obama’s, but he emphasizes the role of the free market in dictating how the process works. “The key feature of [cap-and-trade] is that it allows the market to decide and encourage the lowest-cost compliance options.”

In other words, step out of the way, government, and let the infallible capitalist system do its job of making everyone feel warm and fuzzy from breathing so much clean air.

According to his website, “John McCain will establish a market-based system to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mobilize innovative technologies, and strengthen the economy. He will work with our international partners to secure our energy future, to create opportunities for American industry, and to leave a better future for our children.”

Now isn’t that sweet? We all want a better future for our children. But pundits have called McCain’s cap-and-trade proposal weak, because he refuses to take a firm stand on emission caps. Instead of regulating all carbon emissions by the cap-and-trade system, McCain wants to regulate only a fraction of emissions covered by permits.

Obama likes ethanol. McCain likes (you guessed it) nuclear power. “If I am elected president, I will set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America,” said McCain on June 18, 2008.

Our favorite pundits from Foreign Policy Magazine consider this one of McCain’s 10 Worst Ideas, namely because there is little evidence that converting to nuclear energy will have any immediate impact on climate change. However, fears of three-eyed toads and two-tailed dogs aside, there isn’t much proof that his plan will have any negative impact on the environment.

AIDS: Barack Obama

As we’ve come to expect from those wacky democrats, Obama is pro-condom and sex education.

“[A]bstinence and fidelity may too often be the ideal and not the reality – that we are dealing with flesh and blood men and women and not abstractions – and that if condoms and potentially microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, they should be made more widely available,” said Obama at the 2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church.

Obama put out a formal plan to combat AIDS, the text of which can be downloaded from his healthcare site, and he says that he wants to work with drug companies to reduce the price of generic anti-retroviral drugs in developing countries. “Barack Obama believes that people in developing countries living with HIV/AIDS should have access to safe, affordable generic drugs to treat HIV/AIDS.”

He supports the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and proposes adding $1 billion a year in new funds to the global battle against AIDS.

But, according to the AIDS resource site, the Body, Obama’s international AIDS plan does not pass the “funding test.”

“He didn’t commit $50 billion a year for five years to fight HIV/AIDS worldwide — as he sort of, kind of [said] he would. Instead, he pledged $50 billion to cover all United Nation’s Millenium Development goals which, in addition to fighting AIDS, include halving the number of people who die of tuberculosis, malaria and avian influenza, as well as reducing global poverty.”

[In a 2007 article in Foreign Affairs Magazine, Senator Obama said that he wanted to contribute $50 billion by 2012 to developing countries to "invest in building capable, democratic states that can establish healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth. Such states would also have greater institutional capacities to fight terrorism, halt the spread of deadly weapons, and build health-care infrastructures to prevent, detect, and treat deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and avian flu."]

“Obama also said he supports adding $1 billion a year to fight global AIDS through the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). But Obama didn’t make clear if he wants to add $1 billion to the $15 billion annually in PEPFAR funds or the $30 billion Bush proposed… Paul Davis of Health GAP points out that Obama’s total for PEPFAR could be anywhere from $20 billion to $45 billion over five years, depending on the details of his position.”

Africa Action, however, gives Senator Obama a passing grade for his stand on the global AIDS epidemic, based on two simple criteria:

“Signed Presidential Plan for Leadership on Global AIDS? – YES

Has a formal global HIV/AIDS plan? – YES”

AIDS: John McCain

Condoms! Sex! Do those words scare you? They sure seemed to frighten Senator McCain. The New York Times blog, The Caucus, reported that McCain stumbled in response to a question by reporters on his position on AIDS prevention.

“Senator John McCain met a question, while sitting with reporters on his bus as it rumbled through Iowa today, that he couldn’t – or perhaps wouldn’t – answer.
Did he support the distribution of taxpayer-subsidized condoms in Africa to fight the transmission of H.I.V.?

What followed was a long series of awkward pauses, glances up to the ceiling and the image of one of Mr. McCain’s aides, standing off to the back, urgently motioning his press secretary to come to Mr. McCain’s side…

His press secretary, Brian Jones, later reported that Mr. McCain had a record of voting against using government money to finance the distribution of condoms…

“Q: …Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

So McCain isn’t quite sure of his position on condoms and AIDS prevention. How about funding condom-free AIDS projects?

“I’m proud of the commitment that this administration has made to combat HIV/AIDS. . . and I would continue the present administration’s policy . . . In my view, it’s not so much a matter of money, which I would be glad to commit to, but I do not want to commit money to a country that’s so corrupt in its government that the money won’t be used to combat the problems that it’s intended to address,” said McCain in 2007.

McCain is all for AIDS prevention, as long as it doesn’t involve condoms (he thinks) or corrupt governments. So who and what does he actually want the money to go to? We’ll have to wait for him to come out with an actual plan to find out.

Africa Action sets the record straight on McCain’s position (even if he can’t figure it out himself):

“Signed Presidential Plan for Leadership on Global AIDS? – NO

Has a formal global HIV/AIDS plan? – NO”

Check out the foreign policy primer on Immigration and International Diplomacy.

Posted September 15, 2008 | 10:50 AM (EST)