Sarah Palin’s foreign policy

Forget Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience (there is none… trust me, I’ve looked), but what about her foreign experience?

It’s embarrassingly thin. According to Ben Smith at the Politico, Palin has traveled abroad three times in her life — to Germany and Kuwait to visit deployed members of the Alaska National Guard and to Ireland. Someone should ask about her trip to Ireland too, because a blogger over at Mamanpoulet theorizes that it may have been a quick stop-over on Palin’s way to the Middle East.

Today’s complex security environment demands our leaders have deep cultural, political, and diplomatic understandings of the world’s landscape, yet John McCain has chosen a running mate that has none of those. We could have Palin one-heartbeat away from the presidency, even though she has never met a foreign leader, has no deep understanding of any foreign culture, and never had to consider how to best secure the country or her state.