Kerry battles former state GOP strategist over Obama-McCain qualifications

LYNN – Senator John Kerry says Republican presidential candidate John McCain is “out of touch,” prompting Republican strategist Alexander Tennant to speculate Kerry was joking.Tennant and Kerry offered sharply contrasting views this week of McCain’s and Democrat Barack Obama’s readiness for handling foreign policy.Kerry, an early supporter of Obama, said his fellow Democrat “shows a much better grasp on Afghanistan than John McCain. Obama over a year ago laid out a plan for how to fight a real counterinsurgency.”As violence in Afghanistan escalates, the U.S. is responding by scrambling to get in more troops. But it’s far from clear how the strategy will work in a vast, rugged land where hiding places are many and suspicion of foreign forces is deep.Both presidential candidates have proposed sending more troops to fight the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, where more foreign soldiers have died than in Iraq the past two months.Obama, whose visit to Afghanistan last weekend underscored its growing importance, wants to move about 7,000 U.S. soldiers from Iraq. McCain has not specified how many extra troops he would send.McCain, in Kerry’s view, does not have a plan for dealing with threats to American troops as well as terrorist activity in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan border.”That’s a joke,” countered Tennant, a former top GOP strategist in Massachusetts and congressional candidate who called McCain one of the most experienced members of the U.S. Senate on foreign policy.”McCain called from the beginning for more troops. Clean it up and get out. If this is the only issue people vote on then there is no comparison,” Tennant said.But Kerry said Obama has demonstrated a strong grasp of foreign affairs by calling “for more effort from Europe” in Afghanistan as well as from the North American Treaty Organization.NATO is seeking more helicopters and combat units from America’s often-reluctant European partners to fight in the country’s volatile south.These plans come on top of a surge in troops in Afghanistan that is already well under way. There are now 60,000 foreign soldiers, including 36,000 Americans, fighting an insurgency at its strongest since the Taliban regime was ousted 61/2 years ago. That’s up from just 10,000 U.S. soldiers in 2003, when the war in Iraq began.