Way back in May I skewered GOP senate wannabe Mike?™ McGavick for being a foreign policy lightweight. Given the opportunity to pen a major foreign policy op-ed for the national publication The Weekly Standard, McGavick devoted a thousand words to arguing that the best means towards confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions was to ban its soccer team from World Cup competition.
No… really.
I criticized McGavick’s proposal as simplistic, ill-informed, and contrary to the very ideal of international competition. McGavick cited similar sanctions against South Africa’s rugby team during the 1970’s, but those were aimed at the white, minority electorate who held political control, whereas I argued that McGavick’s World Cup ban would have targeted the Iranian people, only feeding into anti-American sentiment.
But nearly five months later I am now ashamed to admit that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agrees with me. Ouch.
As the Seattle Times’ David Postman points out over on his blog, Condi gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal editorial board yesterday in which she disses the soccer ban proposal during a discussion on embargoes:
“One of the problems that we have is if indeed you would like not to have a situation in which you reinforce the leadership’s desire to make their people feel that America is anti-Iranian people, then you want to stay away from things that have a bad effect on the Iranian people to the degree that you can. You know, we’ve talked