Watching the presidential debate tonight was both worrisome and relieving for me. I was glad to see many important issues addressed. I wasn’t so keen on how the issues were being handled.

First of all, I was pleased to see that the issue of Pakistan, so often neglected in presidential campaigns, came up. Pakistan-US relations are a good example of the doublespeak that has often plagued US foreign policy. For instance, Pakistan, for most of its history, has not been a democracy. The country is extremely unstable, with democratic periods lasting for only brief spasms in the turbulent history of the nation. In fact, even the Pakistani incumbent has a history of corruption. Yet despite the abuses in Pakistan, the U.S. has displayed (mostly) unflagging affection for the country. Even after this Thursday’s US-Pakistan skirmish, Condoleeza Rice said that the US would still support Pakistan as a key ally in the global war on terror. This seems very dubious to me. As demonstrated by last week’s massive bomb blast at the Marriott in Islamabad, Pakistan definitely does not have the ability to maintain security–even in its own capital city! As a result, it is hard to believe that Pakistan would be able to effectively secure the somewhat lawless outer regions of the country. And of course, it’s pretty hard to reconcile their seemingly good relations with their skirmish earlier this week.

McCain pledged to continue the current policy toward Pakistan, which I don’t believe is at all a good one. Terrorism in the area is caused by a deep hatred of all things Western - a belief that is aggravated by Western military activity. The military often kills civilians (even if by accident), and that gives people a reason to hate their families’ killers. This effect is almost certainly responsible for the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. In any case, the only way to seal the wound is to remove the salt. By removing US military presence from the area, extremists will have a harder time finding people that hate the US enough to die for their hatred. As a result, continuing military aid is a terrible idea for the sake of the security of America.

The two candidates sparred a lot on the economy, but I didn’t see any progress being made there, with both candidates basically repeating their own arguments. Obama did make a good point that we should learn from the mistakes of the current financial failure to help prevent future ones, and did discuss how McCain’s economic policies were plagued with at least a certain degree of doublespeak. But despite his eloquent delivery, it appeared that the economic debate was more or less in a deadlock.

I think the most interesting aspect of the debate was the Iraq War. Here McCain brought up one of the central points of his campaign - that McCain is a more experienced senator. McCain cited multiple times 2007’s troop surge, which reduced insurgent activity in the turbulent country. Nevertheless, I believe that using the troop surge as an example didn’t give too much legitimate credibility to McCain’s stance. As Obama pointed out, McCain seemed to avoid mentioning the first three years of the war, which, by all standards, turned out to be a complete mess. McCain made quite a mistake by using the Iraq War as an empirical example of his good judgment, because now we know that the benefits of the war for the US people have been questionable at best. The Iraqi civilian deaths notwithstanding (though they number in the hundreds of thousands), the American and coalition casualties are soon to exceed those from the 9/11 attacks. Fewer and fewer Americans support the Iraq war, and thus continuing to support the war is a risky maneuver.

As for the outcome of the debate: it’s very difficult to judge which side won, if any. From a logical standpoint, Obama might have won the debate thanks to his sheer number of arguments. But McCain’s experience was memorable because McCain kept repeating that point. Though Obama logically might have won, his victory is nevertheless hollow because he wasn’t memorable enough - so he didn’t gain any traction. The debate didn’t have any turning points, and it probably won’t change any opinions about the two candidates. But the debate spoke volumes about the course of this country over the next four years.

Sorry for my extremely long hiatus. I hope to update this blog with more frequency over the coming months.

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