"The fact is that there's no such thing as knowledge when it comes to foreign policy. "
I don't know what this means. I say this, admittedly, from the strong bias of having read avidly on the topic ever since the Vietnam war got me started as a child, and deep interest in history and foreign policy took over from there. There's no such thing as knowing Metternich from Woodrow Wilson?
I think he means that, with any geo-political strategic experiment, there's no control group.
but I can't say that he's ruining anything
In terms of the macro-economy, short term, Bush's policy's are merely sub-optimal, not disastrous. But long term, Bush's policies have the effect (indeed the purpose, I would argue) of unbolting the New Deal from its fiscal foundation.
As to the question: the invasion of Iraq probably is not a deal-breaker by itself for me, though I would have been four-square against it no matter who was President. But I can't imagine that President McCain or President Gore would have pursued the war with the unrelenting dishonesty that the Bushies have. Nor can I imagine that either alternative President would be as out of touch on policy matters, foreign and domestic, as Bush so obviously is.
Even if you don't believe foreign policy is truly knowable, I don't see why you wouldn't agree that Bush & Co. have made some wrong choices, and have refused to either admit or correct those choices. So I would think that even your naive view of FP would favor Kerry.
If Bush, beg pardon, Chimpy suddenly started espousing those views, let's face it, you wouldn't believe him. How could you? The ape's lied so many times before, twisted and flip-flopped and... lied so much, you'd know immediately that he was lying again. All hat, no cattle, as they say in Texas.
So while you might consider voting for him for all of a millisecond, you wouldn't actually do it, now would you?
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