Epic fail, part 2

For the second time in a week, Epic McFail chooses to behave as though the past eight years — oh hell, the past twenty years — did not happen. The Russian/Georgian conflict, he says is “the first…serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.”

Everyone says stupid things. I say stupid things all the time. But then again, I’m not running for president. John McCain has been saying stupid things for months now, incredibly stupid things, regarding foreign policy, the one subject he considers to be his forte. And yet somehow he’s still taken seriously by some people (the media, primarily) as a presidential candidate.

The other day I thought maybe his flatulent “in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations” line was some kind of misstatement of chronology — after all, a man who doesn’t know what a computer does can hardly be expected to understand when the 21st century began. But now he’s decided that the two wars we’re currently fighting, the two wars his party started and promptly fucked into a cocked hat, simply don’t count as “serious international crises.” No, they aren’t crises — they are logical progressions of events that run with the precision of fine Swiss craftsmanship.

These are not gaffes, these are not misstatements. This is his point of view. The Gulf War, Afghanistan, um, 9/11, um, the war in Iraq, it seems none of those count to him, none of those are “serious international crises.” What he means, of course, is that the Russia/Georgia conflict is the first “serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War” that he has a chance of understanding, that he has any kind of frame of reference for. McCain, and the rest of the fossils dominating the crumbling Republican party, miss the Cold War oh so dearly, when we knew who the enemy was and how to fight them, and I’ve seen signs in the Washington media this week that say “Oh boy! Another war! With Russia!! Hooray!! It’s just like the good old days!!!”