McCain’s new attack on Obama and Syria — and how to turn it around

August 20, 2008

At first blush, this report in the New York Sun seems to have very little relevance to the presidential campaign.

Republican or Democrat, will make a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement a priority only if the two sides, meeting now in Turkey, make substantial progress before the inauguration.

That is what a foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama told Syria’s foreign minister last month while on a visit to Damascus. While the trip was not connected to the Obama campaign

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, Daniel Kurtzer nonetheless provided Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem with some advice of his own.

“I urged him to move ahead in the Israel-Syria negotiations as much as possible so that whoever is the next president would not start from too far down the track,” Mr. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, said yesterday in a phone interview. “I did not say anything about Obama or McCain. I said whoever is the next president is not going to want to inherit a process that isn’t going anywhere.”

Kurtzer was in Damascus for a law conference, he wasn’t representing Obama in any way, he isn’t even a paid member of Obama’s staff, and he’s in no way authorized by anyone to engage in any kind of official diplomacy a foreign government. He’s just a former ambassador with some friendly (and fairly obvious) words of advice for Syrian officials.

Nevertheless, a McCain campaign source told Greg Sargent the Republican campaign is poised to jump on this as evidence of … well, something nefarious. Indeed, it appears that Rudy Giuliani will help lead the outraged mob, which will denounce “an Obama campaign Middle East adviser” traveling to Damascus “for meetings with Syrian officials.”

If the McCain gang really wants to go down this road, let them. It’ll give the Obama campaign an opportunity to remind everyone how ridiculous McCain’s policy towards Syria has been.

There are two possible approaches here. The McCain campaign could try to argue that Obama is trying to conduct diplomacy before getting elected. This, of course, would be ridiculous — Obama didn’t send Kurtzer, Kurtzer doesn’t represent Obama, and Kurtzer isn’t engaged in diplomatic work. If that’s the charge, it’s just rather silly.

It’s more likely, though, that the McCain campaign will insist that Obama and his advisors support diplomacy with a state sponsor of terror. I actually hope they do make this argument.

Talking to Syria is not exactly new. In 1990 and 1991

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, Syria was considered a state sponsor of terrorism, but then-Secretary of State James Baker made 16 trips to Damascus, the last of which paid real dividends — “Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in the history to sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time.” McCain did not denounce H.W. Bush for engaging Syria, nor did he condemn Baker for the trips.

More to the point, McCain personally supported engagement with Syria, despite his belief that the country is a state sponsor of terrorism.

After the invasion of Iraq there was much talk among conservatives about invading Syria. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell was heavily criticized for taking a trip to Syria to talk to its leadership. Newt Gingrich said

, “The concept of the American secretary of state going to Damascus to meet with a terrorist-supporting, secret-police-wielding dictator is ludicrous.”

What did John McCain have to say about the trip? Despite the fact that John McCain believed that Syria was a “state sponsor of terror

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,” was “harboring terrorists,” and were sending “Syrians in to fight Americans,” he thought it was worth talking to them, saying that Powell’s trip was “appropriate.” […]

McCain is directly contradicting himself by attacking Senator Obama on his plan to confront Iran at the negotiating table. A pattern is emerging. While McCain claims to be a deep foreign policy thinker with positions carefully developed from his quarter century in Washington, the reality seems to be that his positions — when not outright crazy — are often knee-jerk and contradictory — often dictated by what his temperament is at that moment or influenced by how the political winds are moving.

Administrations from both parties have talked to Syria. Israel is talking to Syria. The Bush administration has backed away from its opposition to talking to Syria. Obama wants to talk to Syria.

And then, there’s John McCain, to the right of everybody, including one of his own former personas.

The McCain gang really wants to talk about Kurtzer? Great. Let’s use this as an opportunity to talk about McCain’s foreign policy incoherence and dramatic flip-flops.

It won’t matter how Obama’s supporters remind anyone of St. McCain’s ignorance. The reek of Rove continues, mud flys everywhere, and the vast majority of voting yahoos continue to see vindication of their “values.” Brainwashed by scum such as O’reilly and Limbaugh who say ANYTHING without being held accountable, it’s clear that real men, tough men, manly men shoot from the hip and say what’s in their heart. Only wimpy, cowardly liberals, democrats, and untrustworthy darkies attempt to explain things—or think.

  • More to the point, hasn’t John McCain recently been playing armchair general with regards to Georgia? He’s been trying to drive that issue. I think, but can’t remember for sure, he had people meeting with Georgians. I know for a fact that one of his advisors was a lobbyist for Georgia. So, if he takes the first tack and argues that Obama is “presumptuously” engaging in diplomacy before being elected, that one can be turned back on him just as effectively.

  • “If that’s the charge, it’s just rather silly.”

    Doesn’t matter. McCain can make the charge, the media will report it and without comparing it to McCain in Georgia or his own statements on Syria. Obama will be called presumptuous and naive on foreign affairs.

  • The Press is pretty lazy and they don’t want to lose their entitlement to a seat on the BS EXPRESS, but that said, this stuff has to eventually come back and bite McCain on the backside. McCain has become such a ridiculous figure that I am stunned that he even touches Obama in the polls. He is now so sleazy that my flesh actally crawls when he comes on the TV. The world will become an even more dangerous place if we elect another entitled, simple minded puppet to such a powerful office. I am more afraid of him than I am of Bush. He is dangerous and senile to boot.

  • Gracious said: He is now so sleazy that my flesh actually crawls when he comes on the TV.

    You’re right. He has reached that level. His soul is as deformed as his body.

  • It’s gets even better – McSame met wit Haffez al-Assad in 1984, a year after the barracks bombing killed over 200 U.S. Marines in Beirut, and came back talking about what a charming fellow he was!

  • Me, too, Gracious & Dale. I can’t stand to watch or listen to McCain anymore as he’s simply smarmy and disgusting, and a liar. And to think a few years back I used to consider him the one Republican I could possibly vote for. I’d like to say it ain’t so, but the facts are clear: John McCain has sold his soul to Karl Rove & Co., and there’s no going back from that kind of deal.

  • See, talking to Syria is evil and dangerous. The much saner, more nuanced policy would be to turn the country to glass.

  • The Bush 41 engagement with Syria in the early 1990s had a much bigger dividend than merely getting them sitting at the same table with Israel. In 1992 – 1994, the last remaining Jewish population of Syria, that had been held hostage by Hafez Assad for a generation, were finally given exit visas and allowed to travel to the US on visitors visas where they were pretty much all given asylum.

    There was no formal agreement and it never made any news, but that is the way it was. A little negotiating on other matters and all of a sudden this group of 2000 some hostages were allowed to travel for the first time in most of their lives. Amazing what a little diplomacy can accomplish.

  • You say “The McCain gang really wants to talk about Kurtzer? Great. Let’s use this as an opportunity to talk about McCain’s foreign policy incoherence and dramatic flip-flops.”

    The problem is that the Obama camp is not taking any opportunity to counter any of the McCain / Rove charges – not in any effective way anyway. I hate to say it but things are looking grim.

  • I’m surprised that McCain has come back up in the polls. Obama’s not fighting back hard enough and the Press is stuck on the “maverick” narrative.

  • Obama’s campaign has been like every other lackluster zombie democratic presidential campaign. He has allowed McCain to define him and he has allowed McCain to define himself and now the images are set. It was not exactly unforeseeable that the McCain would attack early and dirty and Obama should have been prepared. He should have understood that in his particular case, many people WANT to believe every negative thing about him that McCain and Rove tossed out there, and he should have been aggressively fighting back from the beginning.

    We can’t afford a President McCain and we can’t afford a fastidious Democratic candidate. We need somebody who is willing to fight fire with fire. Obama owes us MUCH better than this feeble, lame-ass campaign..

    P.S. I’m not some embittered Hillbot–I don’t think she would have done any better.

  • It’ll give the Obama campaign an opportunity to remind everyone how ridiculous McCain’s policy towards Syria has been.

    And the Obama campaign will not take advantage of the opportunity, just like all of the other missed opportunities that have come and gone.

  • As a gay American and a member of clergy, I am disgusted with McCain’s use of the word “equal” and his touting of the fact that all Americans are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

    I have always believed that equality was an absolute thing, with no levels or tolerance. Certainly this doesn’t seem to be the case, where he obviously has no idea or notion about the word. Will this obscene perversion of “equality” be furthered if he ever manages to get elected?

    We are unfortunately used to politicians twisting words to suit their needs and to match up with their ideologies, but let’s understand that all Americans are not equal, and his intentions to maintain the status quo are obvious.

    Let him rather say that all Americans are entitled to those rights that he and his party agree to give them in accordance with their bigoted views. Using a term as important as “equality” in the manner that he employs is bigoted, devious, or just damned stupid, and I don’t think for a second that the man is stupid.

    Wasn’t it “Animal Farm” that told us that “all animals are created equally, but pigs are created more equally than other animals?” Let the voter beware!

  • What drival…. I watched the “Obama Reveal” and all I can say is ‘Lack of Substance” supported by a patchwork of liberal, leftist, naive, neophytes and tree-huggers looking for The Beatle’s make believe world where “God is dead” and America is so free men can go into the girl’s room because they’re not so sure what gender they are. People who need Big Governmant (the tax payor) to pick-up after their moral mistakes and free-thinkers on a mission to CHANGE everything the United States ever stood for….speaking yet more drival.

    Maybe some of you need to get a real job and pay taxes, start a business from the ground up, become a soldier rather than a protester who aborts their own off-spring yet wouldn’t fight for freedom around the world, stop telling our children handling feces is a healthy sexual lifestyle, or just take responcibility for the babies you make before you say anything….. Talk about make your skin crawl!

  • Clergy and gay sholdn’t be in reference to the same person, if you read your Bible. God said homosexuality is an “abomination”. You’re part of some other religion based on some rules other than what’s stated in God’s Word, the Bible.

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