Well, this is just silly!

By Carl

I can't say I really support either of them in this dust-up, but I'd lean towards Obama's position:

CHICAGO — Senator John McCain put Senator Barack Obama on the foreign policy defensive once again Monday, criticizing him here in his hometown for saying Iran did not pose the serious threat to the United States that the Soviet Union once did.

Mr. Obama’s willingness to engage with adversaries like Iran was a source of disagreement between himself and his Democratic opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, early in the presidential primary campaign. Now it is quickly emerging as a central issue in his likely general election showdown with Mr. McCain

It is true that Obama compared the Soviet threat to the Iranian threat and found it woefully small, and he is correct about that: Iran does not have the ability to wipe America off the face of the world, where as the Soviet Union did. Point to Obama.

However...

The attack by Mr. McCain was prompted by comments Mr. Obama made on Sunday in Pendleton, Ore., where he urged engagement of the nation’s foes and said that “strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries.”

“That’s what Reagan did with Gorbachev,” he said, adding: “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’ ”

And Obama went onto say how Kennedy and Reagan both spoke to the Soviet Union despite the adversarial relationship.

True. To a point. Those high-level talks were preceded by months if not years of lower level talks aimed at setting the terms and conditions of any discussions at the summits.

Obama has, emphatically and repeatedly, said he would hold no preconditions over any discussions with any nation.

In this regard, McCain's charge of "betray[ing] the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment" holds some truth to it.

After all, wasn't it just a few years ago that our esteemed President, Dumbya, looked into Vladimir "Pootie Poot" Putin's eyes and declared "I was able to get a sense of his soul". A few years later, it turns out, not so much.

While I doubt Senator Obama is as bad a judge of character as Dumbya, I have to say that neither is he as GOOD a judge of character as John Kennedy, or even Ronald Reagan. After all, the Wright incident speaks volumes to this loony's inability to even stop listening to a crackpot.

But that brings us back to McCain, who is just flat out wrong when he inflated the threat Iran poses to Americans. Iran poses about the same credible threat to America as North Korea, a country we might be reminded is in talks with the Bush administration as this idiotic scene unfolds.

Yes, it's true, Iran is a state-sponsor of terrorism, and is one of the main forces attacking Americans in Iraq. But Iraq is a place no American should even BE in, in the first place, so it's silly to call Iran a "grave threat". That's like calling the tiger in the cage you've just fallen into, "dangerous", when you had no business being in there in the first place: you make an idiotic mistake, you ought to understand there are consequences to those errors.

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)