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McCain: John McCain believes it is strategically and morally essential for the United States to support the Government of Iraq to become capable of governing itself and safeguarding its people. He strongly disagrees with those who advocate withdrawing American troops before that has occurred.

Obama: Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

For the purpose of full disclosure: when I believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction I was for this. As it turned out they did not and we managed to destabilized something of a stable country and contribute to $4.50/gallon gas. Don’t get me wrong — I realize Saddam Hussein was not a particularly nice guy and all and life in Iraq seemed pretty awful. But, let’s be honest here — really no more or less awful than most other Middle Eastern countries where they may or may not still burn women at the stake for learning to read. I mean, we LIKE Saudi Arabia and they still sentence women to death for witchcraft or, my personal favorite, punishing women for having the audacity to get raped. So, the question is: how does the candidate best clean up GWB’s mess?

For the most part, I totally agree with Obama’s principal for getting the F out of dodge. Here’s the problem: we screwed it up… aren’t we kind of on the hook to fix it?

Most reasonable people (as we think of reasonable people in the US) would say: OK, you have three separate and distinct belief sets in this country. Why don’t you try our screwed up system of states? You’ll have three loose-associated states under one federal government. You can all have your own rules and policies and the federal government will just be there to apportion things and fairly distribute the dead dinosaur juice proceeds. Here’s the problem: religious people aren’t reasonable… like ever. Reasonable people tend to not blow themselves up to make a point.

I appreciate the fact that Obama stood against the war the entire time. In retrospect, he was right and the rest of us were wrong. However, his plan to fix things involving pulling US troops out of the country and expecting an unstable government to not immediately revert back to a military dictatorship is short-sighted. He’s asking three distinct groups (all of whom believe they have God on their side) to agree. This was, fortunately, something our founding fathers realized: government by the Bible is not good government.

On the other hand:

McCain: The answer is not unconditional dialogues with these two dictatorships from a position of weakness. The answer is for the international community to apply real pressure to Syria and Iran to change their behavior. The United States must also bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces and deter Iranian intervention.

Obama: Obama will launch the most aggressive diplomatic effort in recent American history to reach a new compact on the stability of Iraq and the Middle East. This effort will include all of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran and Syria. This compact will aim to secure Iraq’s borders; keep neighboring countries from meddling inside Iraq; isolate al Qaeda; support reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian groups; and provide financial support for Iraq’s reconstruction.

Getting in to a never-ending battle with counties in the Middle East is stupid. Why do we continue to put on this insane posture that these countries on the other side of the world pose some threat to our national security? We have satellites that can watch these people from space. If they launched a nuke, we’d know it practically the second it went into the sky. If there’s one thing that the United States is very consistent in it’s responding in kind when attacked. Responding. Wouldn’t it make far more sense to ensure that someone can’t, I don’t know, climb on the R-train out on Coney Island with a suitcase nuke and detonate it under Times Square? Or get on a Metro-North train in Poughkeepsie and bring it to Grand Central? Or drive halfway across the Golden Gate bridge? Aren’t these all more important — and more likely — then a random launch from Iran? Aren’t these all more important than having this cowboy mentality that we’re going to bring the Middle East in line? How’s that been working out over there for the last, like, forever? Isn’t there a wildly misattributed quote that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? This goes for both guys. Obama’s going to launch a diplomatic mission to make these guys see the light? Really? Have you ever had a reasonable “Creationism vs. Evolution” argument with someone that didn’t end with your eyes glazed over and your mouth agape? Didn’t think so.

So, this pretty much sucks. I agree with McCain’s position on fixing what we screwed up but agree with Obama’s position on not stirring up a hornet’s nest in two other countries.

Point: Draw. (3-1, McCain).