Joe Lieberman and John McCain

Glen Greenwald points out that the foreign policy advisers closest to John McCain are of the most rabid strain of bloodthirsty neoconservative ilk. In an editorial in the WSJ, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham talk tough on Russia's recent border skirmish with Georgia.

The idea that we are going to somehow assert ourselves militarily against Russia, while at the same time fighting two wars and after having made ourselves an international pariah would be laughable if it weren't so utterly scary. Lieberman, in particular, who yearns dearly for war in Iran and Syria, represents the most extreme vision of neoconservatism, a view shared by a rogue's gallery of discredited fools, such as Bill Kristol, John Bolton, and Paul Wolfowitz.

The foreign policy team exerting chief influence over John McCain is truly more extremist -- in a purer and more deranged form -- than the foreign policy team of the Bush administration. They're not only the most extremist faction in American political life, but also the most delusional. These aren't just the people who led the U.S. to war in Iraq -- though they are that -- but they're also the ones who actually believe that the Bush administration has been far too meek in its assertion of U.S. military force and too passive in its interference in the affairs of other countries. They want to accelerate -- massively intensify -- virtually every one of the polices that has brought the U.S. to such disgrace and near ruination over the past eight years.

This is McCain's worldview as well. It is jingoistic and dangerous and tinged with unreality, even a bit of madness. This is what the election is about, for me. An Obama presidency is going to be a difficult one, as the damage that has been done to this country is substantial. A huge amount of any political capital that Obama will bring to the White House will be spent trying to reestablish ourselves as an honest broker and true beacon of democracy. The international audience that he will face will be a tough one, and the enmity will be real and intense.

The fact that McCain chooses to be associated with the Lieberman/Graham camp (and actually to be a proud member of that camp) is more damning than anything else about that man.