Lifted out of the snows of Alaska, Sarah Palin has hit the US headlines as John McCain’s running mate for the Vice Presidency of the United States. The Republican Party that’s targeting Barack Obama for his lack of experience in big time policy making, especially foreign policy, is strongly behind Sarah Palin, for her incomparable of 18 months of governorship of a state that that has more reindeer than people, somewhat longer as a real small town mayor.

That’s all part of the Great American Dream, which may not match with the Dream that Martin Luther King Jr. had, and spoke so eloquently of, exactly 35 years to the day when Barack Obama made his stirring acceptance speech at the Democratic Party Convention last week.

America’s mainstream media is showing all signs that even though most of it may like to see a Republican follow George W Bush to the White House in the November election, it will not let go of Sarah Palin and what she offers the media by way of stories. The best I have heard so far is what John McCain’s wife, the beer baroness Cindy, saw as the best foreign policy qualification of her husband’s running mate. Sarah Palin knows a great deal about Russian policy because she lived all her life in the state of Alaska, which is the closest American state to Russia, said Mrs. McCain.

Just think of it all. In this day and age when the US in thumping its nuclear breast Tarzan-like, making threatening noises against Russia over Georgia, far away Europe, we have a possible next VP of the USA whose knowledge of Putin land and the workings of the Kremlin is good enough, because she lives so close to Russia. Not surprisingly one US critic of John McCain’s choice of running mate observed that Republican candidate seems to have lost his Bering Strait. What a nice way of saying that McCain seems to have lost his marbles due to advancing years.

Most of the audience did not miss the unintended humour when Sarah Palin, making her first speech after being named McCain’s running mate, said with him by her side, that she will not join the Old Boys’ Club of Washington. He was seventy two the day he announced his choice pick of the 44 year old Sarah Palin to head towards the White House with him. What an ideally balanced ticket on age alone?

The Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies should take note. The most knowledgeable people about Indian policy and the working of the bureaucrats at the South Block in New Delhi must be those who live in Talaimannar, which I believe is the closest point in Sri Lanka to Big Brother across the Palk Strait. Following the new US Republican thinking on the importance of geographical proximity to foreign policy, we will need staff from the Talaimannar/Mannar area at the Indian Desk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to benefit from their proximity to Rameshwaram, in keeping the South Block in check.

When one applies this new Palinesque approach to foreign Policy in India, New Delhi can forget the best talent of the Indian Foreign Service in dealing with her many neighours, and instead pick up people from areas that are closest to Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bhutan and China to decide on how best to deal with them, as the India expands both in industrial and military power. Looking at it the Sarah Palin way, the Sri Lanka Desk in the South Block will always be held by those from the southern most part of Tamil Nadu.

Now there’s more to Sarah Palin that must be endearing to right wing Republican, and God loving or Born Again Americans. She is not only all for God in matters of policy, but also sees the hand of God in important aspects of US dealings with the world. Some journalists who have researched material from Palin’s church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, have learnt that the prospective Vice Prez of the US of A tends to see God’s endorsement of controversial national policies. These Huffington Post staffers have found that when George W Bush decided to send US troops to invade Iraq and carry out regime change there, for oil, as Sara Palin has very frankly admitted to what we knew all along, she had led the prayers saying: "Pray for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God....That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan."

How wonderful it is to know that Abu Ghraib with all its accounts of abuse, torture, sodomy, bestiality and homicide of prisoners held, was all part of God’s great plan for the Iraqi people who faced it all, and the American men and women who did it. It must also have been part of God’s great plan according to Sarah Palin that several hundred people have to be held for years without trial, undergoing torture, including water boarding and sleep denial at Guantanamo for so many years. God save us all from such a loving and designing divinity.

There is no doubt that the same loving God’s hand is also seen in the moves by Sarah Palin to encourage building  a gas pipeline in the Alaskan Wilderness, part of the world’s best and largest nature reserves; She told students of the AoG mission she needed to strike a deal with them, that as they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she’d work to implement God’s will from the governor’s office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets. Believing as she does that Creationism should be taught in schools, there will be a new chapter in US school texts on how God put all the fossil fuel under the Alaskan snow for later pollution by man with such terrible effects on the environment, which too is part of God’s will working against God’s own God’s creation, if we believe that story.

With all the problems he is faced with just now, Velupillai Prabhakaran will be encouraged to know that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party that wants the State of Alaska to secede from the United States. There must be some hope among the tigers left in the Vanni that a McCain –Palin win, putting her a heartbeat away from the presidency, will put the United States very much on the tiger side of the action. This will be a temptation to keep the battle going till November this year, and if the McCain – Palin ticket wins, to keep battling till January next year when the new President will be sworn in.

There must be a plan up Prabhakaran’s claw to use a suicide killer to do away with President McCain and ensure that the separatist Sarah Palin takes over as Prez, and then extends all support to Eelam, as she decrees that Alaska will be free of the USA. It will be interesting how the US Ambassador to pro-Palin Eelam will give directions or advise on the conduct of free and fair elections in the new breakaway state of Eelam. Post Kosovo, these are getting into fashion, and hurting the "International Comunity" on its posterior.