It certainly doesn’t, but that’s what he'll make of it, and what his campaign will sell it as. An easy task, given Mike Huckabee almost citing his all inclusive vacations in Jamaica as a foreign policy credential.

gave Bush a military glow. Viceral images.

McCain, as you recall, did quite a bit of touring himself (including Canada, Latin America, and England as well as the Mideast ) earlier this year and came back with very little additional insight or expertise.

I think Hannes' post, though is more on how current American notions of a president have shifted from the Kennedy image to the Bush image, and that the self-sufficient American warrior(but smarter than Bush) is now the only one many Americans are comfortable with . In that case the question is not, why the tour, but why didn't the tour stop in Asia?

Very few Americans today alas know or care much about Europe economically or politically. The Middle East, India and China, on the other hand.......

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

He looked and sounded great, thats why Tina. Once again, he showed that he has good judgement and is able to articulate that judgement in fairly simple statements. Did you notice that many of his foreign policy statements, ridiculed at first (by Hillary too) have now become status quo? Talk to Iran, timetable withdrawal from Iran, strike in Pakistan. Funny how good ideas and sound policies and respect for other nations give you foreign policy credentials.

He may not be president yet, but he is already our leader.

( which is in some ways quite similar to the one Hillary had and was forced to ditch when Bill was president)

None of the candidates so far seem to have any clue on how to deal with the downhill economic slide- certainly not McCain. Americans. now trained in "everyone for themselves" are getting increasingly nervous on the domestic front.

I think it is the sense that so many things are now out of countrol that makes the "untested candidate" so scarey. Kennedy came to power under quite different circumstances.

It is certainly time for Obama to show off his (experts') expertise in attempting to put together a "list of specific proposed actions" for tackling the US (and world ) economic mess,not just criticizing McCain's proposals, and for some micro-exposure in small towns.

McCain, having had the luxury of time, is already well along in that "plain old American" route.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

looked and sounded great sounds more like a concert review. I notice that his foreign policy statements he has been saying we have been saying at the Agonist for years. I guess that gives us credentials too :) Bombing Pakistan however I'm not sure shows good judgment. I am more interested in his actions after his words. As the last month has shown he does not always keep his own words and that is concerning.

Yes, bombing anywhere seems to have negative results, cause by its lack of precision.

A police action to get osama Ladinsson would probably be more effective, and not piss off too many as a result of collateral damage...

I noted with interest the fall in oil and gas prices - and some more optimism in the finance markets. I wonder if it's because they think Obama is a shoe in this fall?

has I feel been reading some blogs way too much .

Lots of people in the US are afraid- of the economy, of aging in poverty, of health care bankruptcy, and of course, of terrorism .

Unless Obama can convince these people before Election Day by putting forth some specific proposals that start to tackle our bankrupt America, they will stick with that old McCain face they know- even if he has changed his position a million times, and has absolutely no clue how to get us out where we are now.

The other day I was listening to an out-of-town family talking about how Obama just had no experience and how McCain, inarguably a senior, was forcing himself to work out three times a week. Ya gotta put visible effort into something, even if it's only exercise. Overcoming racism, getting a law degree and becoming a US Senator seemingly effortlessly is not a plus in their eyes, though it would be in Europe. Obama gets tired. He just doesn't look tired.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

"But Germany and trying to emulate the famous mythical footsteps of Kennedy and Reagan? "

And he did not go here did he, but Kennedy and Reagan would have:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/landstuhl.htm

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

Mauberly. He could have gone, but not with his campaign staff ;)

see my reply to Mauberly.

Well, at least it kept Edwards and his "love child" out of the spotlight for today.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

without press but military thought it would be seen as "too political". Now it's political that he didn't go.

See somewhat hostile article here

C'mon, give the guy a break once in a while, even if the choice he made was wrong. His note in the Wailing Wall gets taken by a rabbinical student and published-
nothing goes unscrutinized.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

a critical piece- might be wrong, but tries to take on a real issue by treating the tour as something more than pure photo-op, as it seems to me few Agonist Obama critics have done:

Berlin was wrong place for Obama's Wall speech

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

C'mon Israel take down that wall and those checkpoints. Obama wants all walls to come down ... no exceptions allowed.

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

that the leadership of the world is America's game to lose, and the game is replayed with each new administration. But note this is "leadership" as opposed to "command"; you can be a commander simply by the mere fact of having subordinates, but you can only be a leader if people follow you.

I've heard of better ways to start a transatlantic dialogue than "here's how you sucked and what you can belatedly do to put it partially right". Besides sounding like more of the same of what we've just had for eight years, coming from America today it might invite a large range of fairly exquisite and unanswerable responses, so from a perspective of "can't we all just get along?" it'd probably be wiser to not start from there.

... there is a national responsibility that Germany has to live up to but there are not many Germans left who had any hand in voting for Hitler.

Also given the abysmal human rights record of the US these days any American politician who cloaks himself in the mantle of moral superiority has already lost all credibility.

Not that the US human rights record was all that great to begin with. Germany fully acknowledges and strives to preserve the knowledge of the unbelievable scale of war crimes and devastation that my nation has caused. Frankly I'd wish other nations would take as openly a look at the skeletons in their closets.

Stop with the guilt trips already.

Ask yourself about Israel's action over the past 60 years,
demolishing over 360 Arab villages, building settlements on the west bank, and so forth...

Better Israel proposes a win/win solution so the Palestinians have no reasons for such anger. And importing more Jews or disenfranchising Israeli Arabs is probably not a win/win solution...

What's you proposal? Why don't you ask the Arab Sovereign Wealth funds to fund the Palestinian homeland?

Israel/Palestine, is the direct fruit of British policy - not German.

Once the fingers start wagging, there's lots of blame to pass around. In fact it's kind of hard to find any *non-assholes* in that equation. No matter how personally satisfying you may find it, starting by saying so to every national participant is unhelpful. As the Japanese say - the goal is to fix the problem, not the blame.

... Germany would certainly be happy to contribute financially. Let's not forget that just before Rabin was shot it looked like such an accord was found. The EU was then standing ready to poor considerable amounts into the region so that peace would be solidified by prosperity. I may also point out that German and Swedish diplomatic efforts are often at the core of any rapprochement we've seen in the past. Even the recent return of the remains of the abducted and slaughtered Israeli border patrol soldiers was brokered by German diplomats.

Your assumption seems to be that money alone can fix this mess. Nothing could be further from the truth. This naivete in conjunction to your aggressive posturing makes you almost sound like a Bill Kristol clone.

re: productivity. But I do find the assumption that I couldn't quote "the Japanese" on anything I care to both faintly amusing and rather disturbing.

You seem rather big on collective responsibility and collective punishment, which was of course bin Laden's stated justification for 9/11 - collective responsibility for the bombing of the towers in Lebanon. Hitler was big on collective responsibility and collective punishment too.

But I think you'll find "the Japanese", like "the Germans", to be a whole lot of individuals, and it'd probably be a good idea for you to examine the "lumping together" you're tending towards here, and think about where combining it with anger can lead.

I admit I'm delighted - you've taken a sub-thread that you created to express a preference for accusatory, hectoring rudeness over dialogue, and turned it into an elegant practical demonstration of the pointlessness of choosing accusatory, hectoring rudeness over dialogue. Kudos - that's *deeply* meta, albeit completely self-defeating.

But somehow I don't feel very enticed to share with you where and how the Holocaust impacted my wider family.

And Quax, it's nice to know the Germans would "contribute"

You're welcome.

Whatever you try to do or mean to accomplish with "fetching another piece of this monstrous, bloody jigsaw puzzle!", I don't think that the way you go about it will get you very far.

As far as the EU is concerned - Israel would be a prime candidate for the EU once peace breaks out. If Rabin had survived and a real solution accomplished I think we'd be talking about the prospect of Israel joining the EU right about now. That would also have been a good framework to get EU money into Israel.

Attila the Hun was a much better dancer than you will ever be!

There I said it!

But you're giving further confirmation of the wisdom of Obama's approach - dialogue vs. accusation - with every further comment you make. Each post you make is a further nail in the coffin of the wisdom of starting dialogue from a position of accusation.

As I said - it may take you a while to catch on. But I'll bet pretty much everyone else has.

under those restrictions, and look what happened in Germany. We don't know that Obama only spoke to those of rank at the hospital, do we?

Obama will never get the "man-to-man" press adoration the 'straight talker' has- he
doesn't have that open style - but neither did Hillary.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

I was just stating what the guards neighbor told him in an email. The soldier is an Obama fan and just felt disappointed. I'm sure Obama met with rank and file and not just the upper ranks, it probably was just bad timing. I don't see why Obama couldn't have gone to Landstuhl, he just couldn't go with campaign staff. It does seem strange that his campaign didn't know the rules and stranger since politicians have used soldiers before.

and our motives are almost certain to be misunderstood by others:-)

I was responding to the Iraq soldier's comment being tacked on to the end of an article on reporters. Would I have reacted if your comment was about Obama going out of his way to meet lower-level soldiers - probably not. Would you have posted it? I don't know. That's where we are right now.

The Landstuhl murk has not been clarified (nor probably will it be) to my satisfaction. I am not assuming his campaign knew what they were doing.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

because we were discussing the article at the time and neither of us realized the press gaggle was not in Iraq with Obama. As for the murk, it wouldn't surprise me that they were not made aware of the conditions before hand, I'm just surprised they didn't look into it themselves. Sorry the comment was brief but work called. :)

trying to avoid political controversy (hah), and not responding on specifics(and then badly) until the McCain attack. Mr. O relies too much on decisions he doesn't make personally.

Why didn't Obama then go on the visit with just a bodyguard (allowed though not paid for by military and not congressional staff) without Retired Major General Gration (whose trip was I assume paid for by the campaign)?

Perhaps Obama was concerned that he would make a military flub - little did he know.....:-). or perhaps that possibility never bubbled up to "the One"

Here's a post I found interesting.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/obama-explains.html.

There is also a general surprise/disappointment at McCain from Hagel (however he was not on the European political leg)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/27/ftn/main4297769.shtml

It is wonderful how the McCain staff were just ready and waiting to put that no publicity no visit ad up. But I think McCain wins on the timing of the baited trap.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

there is no need to end a critique of Obama with a derogatory reference to Hillary. Her down to earth communication with ordinary folks during the primaries is what endeared her to many blue collar workers, elderly people, the poor, etc. Besides, Obama's arrogant streak is well known and is something we ought to be concerned about if he ends up sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

... politician in the US I have to wonder how it is psychologically even possible for a intelligent individual to not develop a streak of arrogance.

have an average IQ and be an intelligent individual?

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

... the way that it was intended. IMHO both Obama and Clinton clearly surpass the average IQ off the combined set of all DC politicians (the pundits as well for that matter). Therefore I'd be surprised for them not to develop at least a residual strain of arrogance.

... is dangerous, and exactly what you described here.

If one is arrogant because they perceive themselves to be smart, well, then they just don't get it, do they?

the intelligent man, proud of his intelligence, is like the condemned prisoner proud of his spacious cell.

But to the issue of arrogance - one of the key observations in that article about Obama's academic career is that spent his entire time as a professor throwing out questions rather than answers - asking for discussion rather than dictating from above. And the questions were good, searching ones.

If that's arrogance, I'll take someone who's got a good idea of what the right questions are over someone who's totally convinced they have all the answers any day.

to float a few possible answers, as he did in his professorial days.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

Since there's an entire attack industry designed to instantly deconstruct concrete statements and recast them in as negative a light as possible, I'd make that machine burn trash as much as I could.

I'd be speaking in big, broad platitudes that everyone in America can nod along with and taking the blows for "vagueness" on my forearms in preference to taking something more solid on the chin. I'd accept the frustration of intelligent people trying to get something concrete out of what I was saying as regrettable but necessary "collateral damage" - since they aren't going to win the election for me anyway (and the most intelligent will be able to read most of what they need to know by scrutinizing the issues Obama was questioning during his academic career, and the types of questions he asked anyway; they aren't issues and questions you're likely to hear being pondered over by the right). The great unwashed will do the choosing based far more on visceral and subliminal concerns than statement of policy, and the mechanism that translates policy statements into public perception is so co-opted and corrupted by corporate and political interests there's little choice but to ignore it completely until compelled to do otherwise.

A person as smart and as well educated as Obama is bound to know that even putting the republic back to status quo ante Bush would require what could be seen as utterly radical action. And anyone trying for real change in America will need to undertake even more radical action. The last thing I'd do is inform anyone of the precise, concrete specifics of how that was going to go down. I wouldn't even whisper words like "bringing DHS under control" or "Fairness Doctrine"; I'd just calculate how to get elected and do whatever I thought it took while committing myself as little as possible in the process.

"until I'm commander in chief" went over particularly badly.

I am not saying dot the "t".

I think McCain's floating "reward for winning idea", silly though it may have been, evoked a positive response from the voters, and dismissive statements by Obama have not.

Look back and see how some new ideas were allowed to float in the Kennedy and Clinton elections. (of course the negative echo chanber has gotten much worse)

I assume you feel the far from new idea in Obama team's "Economic Stimulus" paper today will be pulp by tomorrow.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

It just looked like a thousand-buck bribe designed to take the GOP "stimulus" bribe earlier this year off the table and pre-empt McCain raising the ante; now he'd just be playing catch-up.

I expect none of it to be any more real than Bush's "unitor, not a divider" platform was. What they say is practically irrelevant. The only glimpse of reality we'll get is in analyzing what you know for sure, and that's about their history. In the final analysis, you can't trust any politician to do what they say; they lie for a living, either directly or by omission or spin. Trust doesn't enter into it; you do the best you can to discern their inner nature and ask if their pursuit of that innner nature overlaps with your own interest.

UPI- The e-mail, signed by Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter of Bagram Airbase, a Utah Army National Guard member assigned to the 142nd Military Intelligence Battalion, described the July 19 visit to the base by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, saying Obama "shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service" in favor of a photo op on a basketball court, Army Times reported.

"These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect," Bagram spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green told the New York Daily News. She said Obama neither played basketball nor visited the recreation facility at Bagram, but did shake hands, speak and pose for photographs with troops.

Army Times e-mailed Porter to verify his authorship and request an interview but the newspaper said Porter replied by asking that the e-mail be deleted because "after checking my sources some of the information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong."

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

courtesy of Sfgate Blog

Media Matters - Tracking a smear: Obama "snubbed" wounded soldiers because there were no media or "cameras"

Summary: The claim that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign canceled a visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center because Obama could not bring the media along continued to drive media coverage, even after NBC News' Andrea Mitchell and others declared the allegation to be "false" or without factual basis. Media Matters chronicles the immediate emergence of an echo chamber perpetuating this smear, involving talk radio, conservative blogs, the McCain campaign, and the national media.

details at the link

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

... truth be told.

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

... and well reasoned comment. I think that you are absolutely right that the plight of the Palestinians is another terrible consequence of the Holocaust. I don’t think you will find many within the German political mainstream who’d dispute this.

The dilemma is that Germany precisely because of my country's history can not possible take a forceful stance that could be misconstrued as siding with the Palestinians by hard-line Likkudniks. Already the EU money that currently goes to Palestine is suspected to help finance the purchase of Katyusha rockets. The only way that Germany can hope to achieve anything is if we are accepted by both sides as honest brokers.

I also totally agree that “if the Israel/Palestine agony is EVER to be solved , it means Germany coming out from behind America's coat-tails.”

But money alone will not due the trick. Let’s assume we’d pay every West Bank settler $1M to entice them to leave. You will still have to enforce that no new settlements spring up over night the way that they did in the past. Also just paying them off will not work in many cases since many of them are strongly ideologically and/or religiously motivated. That means it’ll take actual robust policing on the ground.

AIPAC seems to be completely captured by the Israeli far right and its influence is indeed totally contra-productive. I don’t understand why Israel and the US never gave the UN any chance to get involved. Seems to me that robust UN buffer zones between Israel and Lebanon for instance would be quite beneficial to Israel.

Germany may be an economic giant but as a nation we are not a political heavyweight – my country does not even have a permanent UN Security Council seat. Some of this can be compensated by working in concert with the EU powers that do. But unfortunately Europe is anything but perfectly aligned when it comes to foreign policy. Actually that’s quite the understatement given that the disarray of the EU is legend – it would be funny if it wasn’t of such vital importance that Europe gets its act together.

Most Palestinians and Israelis want peace. But the political dynamics have to be there to build trust and create an accord that works for both people. We’ve almost been there once.

It is a sad truth that a single event can sometimes determine the path of history for better or worse. The most important one in my lifetime was the bullet that killed Rabin. I always thought that people would remember this like the shooting of JFK. That is what I thought when I heard that news so many years ago on my car radio while driving in the middle of the night to go on a late night forest hike.

We have to get there again but the political players on all sides have changed for the worse. Obama may or may not be beholden to AIPAC. To have the audacity to hope that he is not may be a stretch.

Germany is in a fairly good place economically and politically but absorbing East Germany did not make us stronger. I like so many of my generation could have cared less for reunification and that despite the fact that my mother was born in Dresden. I would have been happy to keep West-Germany and let the East do its thing. The East went from Nazi totalitarianism to communist and there was no learning from the past - the commies just blamed everything on the evil capitalistic system. In response to the new dictatorship the old one was idealized. That is why we face now a nasty neo-nazi problem in the east. So no, we did not rescue East Germany. East Germany set itself free when brave young idealist took their protest to the street despite the very real risk of being shot. Then the West swooped in and almost depopulated the East while killing of its old industries. And at the same time politically we did not allow them to mature on their own terms (I am sure Angela Merkel would have a very different take on this).

Anyway to wrap this up: Germany’s economic strength is only relative to a US economy that shot itself in the head. The US still has the weight to drag the whole world into another nasty depression. That will be the real test for Germany. We will then see if the welfare systems that were designed to defang economic hardship - so that we don’t see a radicalization 20ties style - will work. Please don’t forget that both most poisonous ideologies of the 20th century were “Made in Germany”. Both are on life support right now but they are not dead. I already mentioned the Nazi problem in the East, but the communists managed to reinvent themselves even more spectacularly and are currently very successful in garnering the vote of the disenfranchised. I am not all that worried about the health of the German republic right now but democracy is never to be taken for granted not in Germany nor in the US.

This is a long rambling posting and I apologize for it being so disorganized but I figure you deserve at least an attempt on my part to explain to you why I honestly don’t think that my nation has the capacity to fix the Palestine problem without other powers in the mix.

I suppose to someone like John Bolton it is "truly radical" to want to work with our allies, to refocus attention on Afghanistan while reducing our presence in Iraq, to tackle global warming issues, to stop torture, etc.

The only truly radical thing here is that John Bolton is still being given press and media property to express his opinions, as if he were not a disgraced failure who was one of a cabal of ignorant and arrogant right-wing shills who managed to take control of foreign policy from an intellectually weak and emotionally feeble president.

eom

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

I think any such plan should be called "Marshall Plan for the Middle East" to sell it internally in Germany. To tie in that this is about giving back and explicitly linked to the moral debt of my nation.

This will be my last post to this very long thread and probably for a while on the Agonist (I have a very busy week in front of me). This dialog was very inspiring and i am looking forward to having more of them.

for coming to a dialogue that we can all learn from.