If the Shoe Fits....

Please read the post below slowly, objectively, and thoughtfully. 

From at Jun 12 edition of Glenn Grenwalt's blog on Salon:

John McCain on the Evil, Barbaric Iranians

John McCain has a new article in The New Republic -- which is exactly where it should be -- calling for regime change in Iran. The whole article contains one paragraph after the next of the favorite pastime of America's political and media class: self-righteously condemning other nations for what we ourselves do (at least) as much. Of all McCain's paragraphs, this is probably my favorite:

"Is it any wonder that this is the same regime that spends its people's precious resources not on roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all Iranians -- but on funding violent groups of foreign extremists who murder the innocent?"

As the American war in Afghanistan enters its ninth full year and our occupation of Iraq its seventh, and as we continue to find all new ways to kill innocent civilians in various countries around the world, and as we continue to transfer billions of dollars every year to Israel and the Egyptian dictatorship -- all while thinking about how to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and thus erode the weak safety net even further, while confronting collapsing domestic infrastructure, rampant unemployment, and massive teacher lay-offs and even grade elimination for American children -- is there any other country you can think of, besides Iran, which "spends its people's precious resources not on roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all [citizens]" but rather on wars and support for foreign groups which kill "the innocent"? And over the last decade, what was the position of John McCain and his party on whether the "people's precious resources" should be spent (a) on "roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all" or (b) wars that kill the innocent?

It seems as though the foreign policy of the United States is mired in what I'd call the "Knuckle Sandwich School of Problem-Solving."  I don't know the overarching objective of that foreign policy, but it's not about making the world a better place for our children. 

Oh, the Serious People in charge will say that they are trying to protect the children, but overall such animosity towards Iran will only serve to create more problems downstream than it solves today.

Does the shoe fit?  It's about time for our short-sightedness to change--for the children.  This is my theme, the credo to guide all my actions.  See my previous post, here.