Strategy v. Tactics

Fred Kaplan does his usual good job parsing the Iraq and Afghanistan sections of the McCain and Obama foreign policy speeches yesterday. But there was more to Obama's speech than just Iraq and Afghanistan. There was a broader strategic purpose--perhaps the best articulation of the Democratic Party's regional security vision that I've heard--which McCain's effort lacked, although the Senator from Arizona has taken a run at foreign policy vision in the past.

Given the tremendous differences between the candidates, I find it rather annoying that the mainstream headlines were about McCain (finally) adopting a similar approach to Obama's on Afghanistan...and Obama sticking to his guns on Iraq. There is, in fact, a consequential foreign policy debate taking place. Now that I'm slipping back into the world after a lovely vacation, I want to take a few days to think, read and do some reporting about this. I"ll be back with more in a few days.