TigerHawk

TigerHawk (ti*ger*hawk): n. 1. The title of this blog and the nom de plume of its founding blogger; 2. A deep bow to the Princeton Tigers and the Iowa Hawkeyes; 3. The nickname for Iowa's Hawkeye logo. Posts include thoughts of the day on international affairs, politics, things that strike us as hilarious and personal observations. The opinions we express are our own, and not those of each other, our employers, our relatives, our dead ancestors, or unrelated people of similar ethnicity.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Foot. Horseback. Whatever.

By TigerHawk at 8/27/2008 11:11:00 PM

"National security night" at the Democratic National Convention was incoherent, at least to me. The party's leaders seem to lack a framework for thinking about America's geopolitical interests, so they resort to endless naked assertions about the damage the Bush administration has done to our national security, as if constant repetition of the conclusion obviates the need for evidence in support of the proposition. Since their "strategy" is about what they are not -- "more of the same" -- it comes out as nonsense, to wit:

First Obama flip-flopped on it; now Biden and Kerry have praised his Georgia policy in opposite terms. Kerry: Obama has avoided McCain's "Cold War" mentality. Biden: Obama will "hold Russia accountable."

Maybe he's going to "hold Russia accountable" in a strictly non-Cold War way. Or maybe they are just flapping gums. The point is, John Kerry and Joe Biden were supposed to be the "witnesses" tonight who told us to trust them, Barack Obama does indeed have a clue. Their speeches were undoubtedly vetted by the same staff for consistency with the evening's talking points, which is that McCain supports the failed policies of the Bush administration. The problem is that Obama's first position on Georgia was the same as Bush's, and McCain was more hawkish than either of them. The only way for Kerry and Biden to attack both Bush and McCain (who took different positions in the crucial first days of the war) was for Kerry to attack the hawkish McCain position and for Biden to attack the less confrontational Bush/Obama position. Of course, the press is hardly interested in pointing out this incoherence, and certainly would not notice that pretty much everybody from Bush to Obama to the European Union has moved toward McCain's initial position in the three weeks since. But we noticed.