As the Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, tear each other apart in a war of attrition, the presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain, is trying to look presidential and focus on substance. After travelling through Europe and the Middle East earlier this month, McCain unveiled Wednesday his first substantive foreign policy speech in Los Angeles.

McCain’s reaffirmation of his commitment to ‘stay the course’ in Iraq allowed his Democratic opponents to argue that the Republican Senator will merely follow the failed policies of President George W. Bush and keep America in Iraq for a hundred years.

A careful analysis of the speech, however, shows

McCain not just rebutting his critics among Democrats but also deliberately differentiating himself from Bush.

McCain argued that he is not against a withdrawal from Iraq, but only a premature one. “It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.”

Accusing his opponents of courting defeat in Iraq, McCain said the “consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for it, as both Democratic candidates do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war”.

Not Bush’s clone

While Iraq is all domestic politics in the United States, McCain has unambiguously signalled that he will not be Bush’s clone when it comes to the rest of the world. For one, he has promised to shut down the controversial Guantanamo base that holds many detainees from the war on terror.

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