This morning we learned that the unemployment rate has jumped to its highest level in years and that commanders in Iraq have decided to suspend troop withdrawals due to the lack of Iraqi political progress. Yet Senator McCain’s speech closing the Republican convention was completely devoid of solutions to these or other vital issues.

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While Sen. McCain has claimed his foreign policy experience as one of his greatest attributes, his actual record demonstrates a history of poor judgment and reckless rhetoric. The Republicans have spent the entire week trying to resurrect McCain’s image as a critic of the Bush administration, but his record shows that on issue after issue McCain was in perfect alignment with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

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As events move quickly in Pakistan, Georgia, and elsewhere, Republican convention-goers heard nothing but more of the same – vigorous defenses of Bush administration policies and little or no mention of critical issues: Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, and global warming. The New York Times concluded that “McCain cannot escape the burdensome shadow of President Bush because his policies offer no real change.”

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The stakes tonight for Governor Sarah Palin’s speech are extraordinarily high. The McCain campaign’s contention that “She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” is not good enough. She must be ready to step in immediately. The stakes are too high.

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Iraq is entering a pivotal period. With little political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia since the surge began a year and a half ago, the U.S. has now begun to transfer authority over the predominately Sunni Anbar province to the Shia-dominated Iraqi government. While conservatives have prematurely declared victory in Iraq, progressives have consistently warned that political reconciliation and the establishment of the Iraqi government will be the hard part.

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This week, events around the world confirmed many of the arguments that progressives have long been making about foreign policy. These are all positions that progressives have held for years– positions that the Bush administration chose to ignore.

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Yesterday Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. James Conway, reaffirmed the fact that we need to focus more aggressively on Afghanistan instead of Iraq saying that “the economy of force is not necessarily working.” Conway is just the latest in a long line of senior military officials who have taken this position, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen.

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Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states is an escalatory step that attempts to lock in its recent military gains through political action. Russia continues to hold the military and political initiative, and U.S. and its NATO allies have been able to do little to counter it.

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