Palin: War with Russia!

Via Marshall, I see that ABC has posted the initial transcripts of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin. These are partial, of course. Not that I'm holding out hope that he'll ask Sarah about forcing women to pay for their own rape-kits while mayor of Blaine Wasilla.

Anyway, from the interview excerpts provided by ABC, we find that Palin and McCain are two peas of the same bellicose pod:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

This is certainly in line with the McCain platform of More Wars. Just what this country needs!

Says Marshall, "[This] sort of shows the consequences of taking a freshman governor with no experience in foreign policy and giving her a ten day crash course with Randy Scheunemann and the rest of John McCain's neocon brain trust that got booted from the Bush inner circle for being too nutty."

In this way, Palin is something of a political blank slate, a Manchurian Candidate meets Chance Gardener: a dress-up doll for rabid neoconservatives. Obviously the campaign thinks McCain's bellicose bravado in the aftermath of Russia's recent incursion ("We are all Georgians now") is a political winner, and they're doubling down on that with Palin, whom they hilariously argue is some sort of expert on Russia because Alaska is near Siberia.

Obviously I'll have much more to say about Palin, and the man at the top of the ticket (you know, the guy who can't get people to come to his rallies without her) in the coming days.