Our guest blogger is Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org and veteran of the Iraq war.

Today, video was unearthed in which Senator John McCain in 2003 says we can just “muddle through in Afghanistan.” Watch it:

The video offers a glimpse into the true thinking of those, like McCain, who backed launching the war in Iraq and committing our forces there indefinitely. Particularly, they believed that Afghanistan wasn’t a concern and we didn’t need to take it seriously. In fact, just a year earlier, on CBS’ Face the Nation, McCain said capturing Osama bin Laden wasn’t “that important.”

Five years later, we now see where that poor judgment and lack of insight has gotten us. The Taliban has regained large swaths of Afghanistan, al Qaeda has reconstituted itself, Osama bin Laden still is free, and Afghanistan is in crisis. All of that lends itself to our nation being that much less secure, and in much greater danger of another terrorist attack from extremists from the Pakistan/Afghanistan region.

This is not the way to win the war on terror and keep America safe. That’s why it is so important that we get this strategy right now.

Think about it. Had we not gone into Iraq, as Senator McCain thought we should, our forces would have been concentrated in Afghanistan, we would have crushed al Qaeda, probably captured or killed Osama bin Laden, and secured the country all the way to the Pakistani border.

Had we sent the Iraq surge brigades to Afghanistan, instead of to Iraq, and shown a real commitment there, perhaps our NATO allies wouldn’t have pulled their troops from Afghanistan. And, again, we could have decimated al Qaeda, secured the border region, and maybe captured or killed Osama bin Laden.

And now, we’ve got a third chance to get this right. Unfortunately, while it’s laudable that Senator McCain has suddenly discovered there’s a war in Afghanistan, his hands are tied. A couple of days ago, he called for more combat brigades to be sent there. A few minutes later, the Washington Post reported he pulled back on that and said NATO would have to supply the troops, because we would have to keep our forces in Iraq. Well, the Administration’s commitment to endless war in Iraq and its political unpopularity throughout Europe is what caused our NATO allies to pull troops from Afghanistan in the first place. That’s unlikely to change if McCain continues the Bush policy.

That brings us back to the video. John McCain got it horribly wrong in 2002 and 2003 and showed poor judgment in the real war on terror that led us to where we are today. And now, he’s having a problem figuring out how to get it right. The knowledge of “how to win wars?” I just don’t see it.

Our guest blogger is David Sullivan, Research Associate at the ENOUGH project.

The Beijing Olympics may be just around the corner, but the dream among human rights activists that the games might push the Chinese towards being a responsible stakeholder in international affairs has run up against an appalling recent track record in Africa.

In Sudan, the BBC recently uncovered evidence of Chinese military support for the Sudanese government in Darfur, a violation of the UN’s arms embargo made all the more egregious by its discovery coinciding with the decision of the Prosecutor of International Criminal Court to charge President Omar al-Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

On Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe stole reelection and inflation is now at 2,200,000%, China joined with Russia to veto targeted sanctions that would have imposed an arms embargo and travel and financial restrictions on Mugabe and 13 of his top henchmen. These sanctions would have imposed a direct cost on the men most responsible for the campaign of terror and violence that made free and fair elections impossible, without affecting Zimbabwe’s imploding economy.

The good news is that China’s blatant support for Zimbabwe may prove a misstep that could limit its ability to defend ally and suspected war criminal Omar al-Bashir at the Security Council. The Zimbabwe veto infuriated Britain and the United States (President Bush said he was “displeased”) who are now more likely to veto any efforts by China to support the suspension of the International Criminal Court’s case against Bashir.

The bad news is that the U.S. continues to push issues like Sudan and Zimbabwe to the Security Council without the high level bilateral diplomacy with China that is necessary to support effective action. Despite the company he may find there, President Bush has defended his decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics on the grounds that not going would “make it more difficult to speak frankly with the Chinese leadership.” But until such conversations include subjects like stopping support for genocide and crimes against humanity in Africa, the U.S. is unlikely to garner effective responses to these issues at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

An equally important question looms for Beijing as it tries to assert itself as a major world power: Does China really want to be known around the globe as the chief defender of war criminals, tyrants and bad governments in general? From Sudan and Zimbabwe to Burma and North Korea, China is quickly and rightly becoming known as every despot’s best friend.