Republican Vice-President candidate Sarah Palin demonstrated once more her profound ignorance of the world stage. After previously insisting to no avail that she had foreign policy experience due to her closeness to Russia as Governor of Alaska, Mrs. Palin recently referred to the nation of Afghanistan as “our neighboring country”. Speaking to several hundreds supports in a rally in San Francisco, Mrs. Palin congratulated the work being done to build schools in war-torn Afghanistan in the context of her aforementioned statement. The country of Afghanistan is separated by thousands of miles, needless to say, from the United States.

This recent faux paux adds to Mrs. Palin’s evident inexperience in world affairs and, for that matter, domestic affairs. Her answer as to why she had experience in dealing with Russian affairs was ridiculed due to the fact that Mrs. Palin’s only justification was that Russia was close to Alaska and, apparently, when Putin rears his head he is in Alaskan air space and she, by implication, has to confront that.

Prior to being selected by John McCain and subsequently nominated by the Republican delegates, Mrs. Palin’s only statement on world affairs was to an Alaskan business publication in which she stated that she has heard about the U.S. military troop surge in Iraq on the news and further stated that she wanted an exit strategy (Mrs. Palin’s eldest son served in Iraq). Her endorsement of an exit strategy contradicts Senator McCain’s position on Iraq.

In addition to her stumbles, Mrs. Palin has offered little in the way of a coherent platform for world affairs. The only foreign policy position she has unambiguously taken is declaring her love for Israel. But that hardly is an atypical matter in American politics.