Romney attacks Obama on Israel and Iran in major foreign policy address
Mitt Romney has gone for Barack Hussein Obama's jugular in a major foreign policy address delivered at the Virgina Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia on Monday. I have video of the speech below. As you might imagine, much of it deals with Israel and the Middle East, and it's very different from the Obama administration's foreign policy.Let's go to the videotape.
You can find a full transcript here.
It goes without saying that the so-called 'experts' have panned the speech (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
Analysts reviewing what the Republican nominee said in what his campaign billed as a major foreign policy address weren’t impressed. The speech, they say, was much like Romney’s previous swings at laying out a foreign policy: couched in broad ideology and big ambitions and lacking the specifics for how he’d bring any of them about.Just wondering what specifics President Obama has offered. He hasn't said how he will stop Iran, he hasn't said how he will bring 'peace' to the Middle East (although he seems to believe that involves the destruction of Israel, God forbid) and he hasn't offered any solutions in Syria or anyplace else. But don't expect the 'experts' to pan him anytime before November 6.
So while Romney was using the speech to capitalize on the momentum he had from his strong debate performance and the Obama administration’s vulnerabilities on the Libya attacks, foreign policy experts say the speech was vague at best, and reflected some confusion of ideas.
“There’s absolutely nothing in this speech. This is a repackaging of language that has been a staple of Romney’s campaign since he threw his hat in the ring,” said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations. “If Romney has a foreign policy strategy, he still has not told us what it is. The governor is very fond of saying hope is not a strategy, but that cuts both ways. He didn’t answer two key questions: what he would do differently and why we should expect what he would to work.”
Obama partisans also panned Romney’s 23-minute speech and his overall rhetoric on international affairs as lacking in substance and nuance.
“There’s an awful lot of rhetoric and things but when you get to the specifics, you just get the sense he doesn’t know exactly what tools to use,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on a conference call organized by the Obama campaign. “I just find him very shallow….To those not totally into foreign policy, it sounds pretty good but it’s really full of platitudes.”
Referring to the op-ed on foreign policy that Romney published last week in the Wall Street Journal, Albright added, “I am a professor. If one of my students turned that in, he’d get a ‘C’ because he gave absolutely no specifics.”
In any event, you'll note that Romney harps on Israel again and again in a positive way - at least until he mentioned the dirty words 'Palestinian state'. I'm happy to have him be vague on that one. Is anyone listening?
Labels: Campaign 2012, Mitt Romney, US foreign policy
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:15 AM
2 Comments:
I'm in a discussion group on Linked In and the guys on there are people who have done all kinds of economic development in Africa, the Middle East, etc. Their view is that what Obama has done is about to bring about the end of the world for those poor people. They say 70% want to live in peace, 30% are disrupting, and there is no way to tell who is who. Nor can they figure out what to do about it. They say life was actually improving until this administration disassembled the pathway.
It needed be this complex. Obama clearly signaled through his intermediaries in the Swiss and Swedish embassies in Tehran, that in exchange for Iran not announcing or testing nuclear weapon before early-mid 2013, Obama can forestall any military or material action against them. After his second inauguration, Iran will be more or less free to do what it likes since the cornerstone of Obama's foreign policy is retreat and withdrawal. The Congress is free to continue vote aid and support to Israel but Obama won't mobilize any actual material or operational support and will delay any replenishment the same way Nixon did.
Whatever the outcome of any conflict between Iran or its proxies and Israel, the relationship between the US and Israel will be permanently broken.
Moreover Obama cares less than nothing for the mid term elections in 2014 and won't care if the Democrats loose both houses of Congress badly.
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