Let logic and reason prevail in the US Presidential campaign

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to claim hundreds of lives every month. The global economy remains under severe stress. Climate change represents a potentially devastating threat to Planet Earth. So, Senators Obama and McCain have a number of issues on which they can differ robustly without resorting to mudslinging and denigration.

The latest example of absurd criticism and childish attacks is the targeting of Senator ObamaSenator Obama's recent tour of Europe and the Middle East. Although the tour won rave reviews in France and Germany, an effort is being made to project Mr Obama's success in helping to curb anti-America sentiments in Europe as a defeat.

Mr Obama is supposed to have sinned by crossing the ocean to meet world leaders and receiving the accolades of admiring crowds, at a time when the US was facing the threat of recession and inflation. Even more unfair was to project Senator Obama's cancellation of a visit to a veteran's hospital overseas in response to objections by the military as an unpatriotic act.

Another sterile issue is who said what about the Iraq war in its different phases, and when. Such argumentation cannot prove who would make a better president.

The candidates should focus on the real issues of the war on terror, and avoid quick, easy fixes. On his part, Mr Obama appears to have accepted a little too blithely the views he imbibed during his recent Afghanistan visit. In his recent post-tour interviews, for example at the Q & A Session with the Media with Color or a similar name which was covered live by CNN on July 27, Mr Obama gives the impression that if Pakistan cracked down with full force against the militants along the border, the problems in Afghanistan would be greatly eased if not solved.

The problem is far more complex than what is being suggested by Senator Obama. What about the extremely unpleasant consequences of starting something that Pakistan may not be able to finish? As it is, Pakistan's new democratic set-up is already beset with grave and apparently insoluble economic problems and also faces a potential constitutional deadlock over the judges issue.

In conclusion, it would serve the interests of the two presidential candidates if they define the real issues of the campaign and suggest appropriate solutions and remedies, rather than to blame each other or launch personal attacks. The impression one gets is that in spite of everything, they have not gone for each other's jugular, at least not yet, so that is a plus.