John McCain, unsurprisingly, won the Wisconsin primaries tonight. That doesn't interest me. What does interest me is something that he said in his speech. Pakistan had an election today as well, and voted to remove Pervez Musharraf from the office of the president, where he has held power as a military dictator since 1999. McCain actually chastised the Pakistani people for peacefully, democratically removing a dictator from power.
1) There's no better way to plug your foreign policy than to demonstrate that you're unprepared and resistant to change in other countries where we may have strategic interests.
2) There's no better way to say "I am qualified to conduct a war designed to bring democracy to the Middle East" than to denounce a country in the Middle East for democratically unseating a military dictatorship.
3) He just came on record as opposing a political movement which will soon be taking control of a country which McCain himself acknowledged is a crucial ally in our defense strategy. He wants Pakistan to remain an ally, so instead of extending an olive branch to the new leaders, he made a point of sticking with their old one.
Come on, man. Look before you leap.
[Update: full text of McCain's speech here. The Pakistan reference is in the 5th paragraph.]
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