11/04/08--The Day of National Suicide?

The Geek is old. Age gives only one compensation for the physical deterioration of passing years. That is experience. The basis for saying, "Been there. Done that. Have the scars to prove it."

The first election the Geek consciously (as opposed to vicariously due to years of studying history) remembers is the Truman "give 'em hell, Harry" come from behind victory in 1948. While he hopes for the impossible--history repeating itself with only the names changed--the Geek does not really expect it.

While the Geek is not persuaded that John McCain is the best of all possible choices, at least from the foreign policy and national security perspective, he is infinitely better than the man with no discernible past, no recognisable character, and an overabundance of True Believing ideology who is projected by pollsters, pundits and media alike to be the next president. The junior senator from Illinois will, despite the inevitable fissures in the Democratic Party, be a metaphorical knife held to the throat of the United States. An instrument of national suicide.

This should not be taken to imply that the Geek is convinced that the Republican Party is some sort of repository of good judgement and excellence of strategic thinking. As his repeated flailing at the idiocy of the current administration's ideologically driven foreign policy have shown, this is not the case.

Considering the range of foreign policy and national security challenges--many, if not most resulting from the intellectual bankruptcy of the neocon ninny views of the current administration--the next administration will have to possess an inordinate amount of experience, expertise, and courage to even begin to reclaim the losses. Obama and his ideological mentors, handholders and advisers lack even the basics of any and all of these essentials.

Look at the world. Get a grip on its realities. The credit collapse and the resultant global recession (or is depression the right term?) is a foreign policy/national security problem. The seemingly endless and sterile debate over the price and availability of energy prime movers as well as the corollary, anthropogenic global climate change is a foreign policy/national security problem.

So also is the now almost forty year old Nixon-declared "War on Drugs" which like the current administration's "Global War on Terrorism" is both a disastrous exercise in mis-branding and aimed at an unachievable goal. To consider the traffic in illegal drugs and the consequences of that traffic requires a close and insightful understanding of foreign affairs--as well as a proper understanding of just what US national security is and what the achievement of national security might need.

If these global challenges weren't enough, the next administration must project, or at least protect, core US national interests in the face of a resurgent (but internally unstable) Russia, an intransigent and perfectly self-interested PRC and the still growing wave of Islamism. Then, of course, there are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Add in the question of Iranian (and North Korean) nuclear ambitions.

While we're at it, the noisy collapse of pseudo-states in Africa should not be overlooked. People have an annoying habit of becoming emotionally aroused by graphic images of human wretchedness and demanding that their government, "Do something!" And, governments, particularly those of democracies, have the more annoying habit of going ahead and doing something usually without thought or planning worthy of the terms.

Does anyone really, really, the Geek means really believe that Senator Obama and his inner circle (including that mouth without discernible connection to a brain) Joe Biden have any more capacity than the current administration has shown over the past seven plus years to handle any of these problems? And we cannot console ourselves as many of us did (including the Geek) back when W. took the oath of office. "Well," we assured ourselves, "at least there is adult supervision."

Can't make that argument again. W. and his alleged adult supervisors have damn near killed the US internationally. They have thrown away our global prestige, appeal and credibility. They have overstretched our military almost to the point of terminal enervation. They have cost us much of our political will.

If one crew of ideologues--each and every one of whom had resumes of great thickness and seeming accomplishment--can do so much damage, what can putting another crew--most if not all of whom have far skimpier records--do?

With Uncle Sam's head already nearly severed from his body in a way that would make the most scrupulous of Islamist killers happy, what will it take to cut the last few shreds holding Sam together? The Geek hazards the estimate that it will take only one or two seemingly minor ideologically based mis-readings of the reality of the world and the threats it holds to finish the execution.

This is the twelfth presidential election since the Geek achieved the franchise. It is the first one where the outcome has well and truly scared him. (OK, to err on the side of accuracy the one four years ago got his knees knocking something fierce.) This time around, the Geek's scrawny knees resemble a manic set of castanets and his stomach churns such that he fears losing his upcoming lunches for the next several weeks.

If the MSM and the Democratic Party get their collective wish and Obama is handed the keys to the Oval, the Geek can only hope that somewhere in the president-elect's naive and ideologically intoxicated brain there is at least one small neural network marked, "self-preservation." If not that, the Geek falls back on his default hope--that the backroom types of the Democratic Party have more sense than their Republican counterparts showed during the last several years of crashing disaster.

It's not much of a hope on which to get a grip.

There is another rope of hope. The Geek grasps it strongly. Tightly. That hope is simple, but it has some slight root in history. In the past, as in 1948, the hoi polloi, all of us who are proudly members of the non-elite, who eschew the snotty, superiority of the self-defined elite, have shown the great good sense to do the unexpected and flip the electoral bird at pollsters, pundits and the rest of the We-Know-Best chattering class.