Gary of course I speak about politics. I think on a personal level we would find a great lot of things we have in common.

Anyway your sight to Palin’s interview requires a few responses.

To that Israel-issue: Israel may be your friend and ally and certainly its okay to express the Americans support. But the question was how she would react if Israel attacked Iran, which for sure is playing with fire and could cause a war with unpredictable consequences. Even the Bush-administration takes action to pretend Israel friom doing so. But Palins instant answer was “there is no second-guess on Israel’s decisions”, three or four times in the same wording. That goes far beyond the justified support, I call it a free ride.

To Georgia and Russia: as far as I know the Nato-contract excludes to join members whose frontiers are not undisputable clarified. This is not the case actually. Beyond that formal matter I would be pretty reluctant to offer them the membership. That for two reasons. First it would be pretty provocative to the Russians to have a Nato-member next door. Imagine say Mexico or Canada would have joined the Warshaw-pact in that times. You would have felt quite uncomfortable I guess. Second reason is, that the current gouvernment of Georgia obviously is not a very reliable and serious partner. Of course Saakaschwili provoked the Russians and played with the fire when attacking the Russian population in South-Ossetia. What Palin actually called “unprovoked” was indeed a provocation. Nobody doubts anymore that Georgia started the war. That Russia “liked” to be provoked and reacted with disproportional measures is out of discussion. But anyway to deal with Russia is a thing you should do with great caution. So I liked what McCain said at his acceptence speech. He first praised Russia, called them friends, clarified not to intend a new cold war. And only after that expressed his symapthy to Georgia. Not so Palin. Her answer to the question if she was aware that a Georgia-membership would eventually mean a war with Russia was a simple “probably so”. That was the response of an intern. Change the sides for a second and imagine how you would receive this answer beeing Medwedev or Putin. Speaking so unreluctantly and naive about a war with one of your most important partners is certainly not a sign that she is ready. Every experienced politician had answered something like “Hey the Russians are our friends and I don’t want to participate in speculations what would happen in cases which are not even on the table”.

Finally the Bush-doctrin thing. Gary, with all personal respect, you can’t discuss away that she did not know what she was talking about. When asked about the most important ideological basis of the American foreign policy of the past five years she clearly had no clue what he was talking about and tried to save the situation by asking in what respect the question was meant. But the interviewer refused to give her a hint and asked for HER interpretation. No vague question, a fair opportunity to lay down her views. But she had none. So she tried a guess by unassertively asking “his world view?”. There may be more than one interpretation of the term but Bushs’ world view certainly doesn’t belong to them. Then, after the interviewer helped her with HIS interpretation, she displayed that she didn’t get the core. Her answer refered to the right to defend America, if there is clear indication that an imminent strike is threatening. How trivial! Of course you have! The question is, if you have the right of preemptive strikes, the right to intervene even before a threat has become imminent. You might favor this idea or oppose it, but at least you should have an oppinion about it, when you aspire to be the person in handsreach of the red button, ain’t you? Gary, honestly, this had nothing to do with liberal media, biased media, weiners or whatever. What else do you need? That she openly says, “hey interviewer, my team did not give me a lesson about it to memorize, please ask again next week”?

Enjoy your sunday!

P.S.: Sorry that my posts are always pretty long. As English is not my mother tongue I don’t really know how to form short sentences.