and, PLEASE, get over Sarah Palin. I've found lately that many of my middle-of the-road friends are thoroughly pissed at the Republicans about the economy and would vote for Obama, but still have major doubts about foreign policy issues.
Their unfocused fears draw them to the simplistic tough guy bullying that passes for "experience" in the McCain/Bush camp. I've found the following line of discussion to be very effective in getting these folks to open up their thinking a bit, and to say that they never considered our foreign policy and military position in this light.
We should carefully consider whether a reasoned and careful approach such as that proposed by the Obama/Biden campaign and ALL mainstream American foreign policy institutions is the best way to secure a peaceful world. It's interesting that even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, others in our military leadership, and our NATO allies feel that we have missed many opportunities for dialogue on the best way to make us safe.
The naked aggressiveness of the Bush/McCain approach is very scary. Clearly, if one sets out to pick a fight one is likely to be in one. History has proved that the possession of nuclear weapons has proved to be tactically useless. If this were not true, how does one explain the 50 year old, dangerous, and wasteful stalemate between Russia and the U.S.?
The world will in fact be less safe when Iran possesses these weapons, but that doesn't mean that the most effective way to deal with this new danger is to invite retaliation by preemptively killing thousands or millions of ordinary Iranian men, women, and children (which seems to be the Bush/McCain plan). We need to remember that these weapons ALREADY exist in the hands of Pakistan, and experts warn that loose Russian nukes may be elsewhere in the Middle East already.
Surely, rather than providing our adversaries with the moral justification to turn Manhattan or Los Angeles into a radioactive cinder, we MUST take the patient and mature path. We also need to remember that the U.S. military is capable, using the missile submarine fleet that we have on station in the Indian Ocean, of totally destroying any nation in the Middle-East that attacks us. Israel is capable of doing the same. The Iranians are not fools, but apparently have decided like the Russians did that they must have these weapons to balance the perceived threat against Iran. If they choose to continue with their weapons program, they will find as we and the Russians did, that other than pissing rights they have wasted their money.