Adding his voice of support for Obama’s foreign policy vision to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s, the Afghan ambassador to the US endorsed a vision for his country identical to Obama’s - and vastly different than John McCain’s.

Obama considers Afghanistan the foremost front in the War on Terror; McCain doesn’t. Obama considers more troops an urgent priority; McCain doesn’t. And while the ambassador agrees on all these points, he is also vocal about the main division between Obama and McCain on Afghanistan: Whether the US should pursue al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas regardless of Pakistani support or not.

“We would appreciate it if Pakistan could take full responsibility in dealing with them,” [Afghan ambassador Said Jawad] said. “But if they can’t, if they don’t have the resources, they should allow the international community to take these elements out, for the sake of Pakistan, for the sake of Afghanistan, and for the sake of the world. These are criminals. We should allow the humanity to go out and eliminate these enemies of humanity. We should not fool ourselves with the legal questions such as sovereignty.”

I’m not sure if I like the phrasing of the last sentence, but I agree with its sentiment insofar as that the GWOT depends on us violating the sovereignty of other nations for the sake of tracking down non-state actors - terrorists. All those Tom Clancy-type scenarios that are the bread and butter of counterterrorism are, by and large, illegal. They throw sovereignty out the window for the sake of beating the bad guys. Heck, that’s the mission definition of the CIA.

So for McCain to criticize that with one side of his mouth while he props up the reasoning behind the Iraq invasion is vile hypocrisy and big time dumb. Fortunately, the rest of the world seems to agree with his opponent.

Now all that needs to happen is for the American electorate to give a listen to the rest of the world.