Foreign Affairs

So I said I was a single issue voter: who is best suited to protect this country. Whether the rest of the country felt that strongly on the this issue or not, the party who I believe is less able to manage WWIV is now in charge as we are left with a Democratic House and (most likely) a Democratic Senate. What now?

Well, first off, we are not going to immediately withdraw. I do think that enough Democratic Congressmen and women will act rationally enough to prevent the John Kerrys of the Congress from getting their way. I do think there will be more forceful action to get the Iraqi government to act on its own. Maliki's government has been a little too cozy with Sadr and some other unsavory folks, but he can afford to do that if the American's have got his back. (As I stated previously, I do think that it will get worse for the Iraq people before it gets better.) We now have the opportunity for a good cop/bad cop approach and say, "Maliki, you had better make progress or else."

As an aside, I think the realistic worse case is that Iraq breaks up into three regions; the Kurdish north, the Shiite south and the Sunni middle. How bad would that be? I am not sure (I think it actually depends on how much trouble the KURDS want to make with Turkey and Iran). I do not think there will be "civil war" for all of Iraq.

I also see no change in policy toward Iran and North Korea.

The fundamental reason is that the Democrats did not win, the Republicans lost. The Democrats have no defined agenda, so they will be free to muddle along for two years and try and consolidate their victory in 2008. I simply do not see ANYONE in the Democratic leadership willing to stand up and take ownership and responsibility for action, in particular on foreign affairs.

More thoughts later...