Did Romney’s Foreign Policy Team Indicate That He Would Try to Establish Autocratic Puppet Regimes In the Middle East?
The headline on the Washington Post’s opening Web page was irresistible: “Romney aides: No Mideast turmoil if he were president.” The headline of the actual article, by Philip Rucker, though, is headlined “Romney team sharpens attack on Obama’s foreign policy.”
Both headings are accurate. Romney’s foreign policy team—drawn, apparently, entirely from the farthest-right faction of George W. Bush’s foreign policy advisors—issued a series of written statements yesterday. And among them, if I understand correctly, is one in which they suggest that the Obama administration should have established a puppet government in Libya after Gadhafi fell last year. Oh, and probably one in Egypt, too. And in Yemen, and in ….
Y’all know: Like the puppet government that these very same folks, then Bush administration officials, tried to establish in Iraq back in 2003. The effort that worked out so well. Remember?
It’s time now for Obama and the news media to make it far better known than it is now who Romney’s foreign policy team members are—and to remind people of what happened when last they directed this country’s foreign policy.
As for the fact that Romney has delusions of autocratic grandeur, or at least of mystical powers over Middle Easterners to cause them to happily acquiesce to our efforts to control them, Romney himself is taking care of that just fine, thank you.
And at least he’s finally making clear where all that extra money for defense spending will go. If not where that money will come from.
Romney’s sons all are too old to be subject to any new military draft necessitated by his and his policy team’s desires, and his grandchildren all are very young. So the Romney family is save. Many other families, though, probably not so much.
No. You just do what you can to establish a democratic government that won’t attack the U.S.
Something Obama has decided to abdicate (along with many, many other things).
You have a do nothing President who is taking your party and your ideology DOWN.
Ah! You just do what you can to establish a democratic government that won’t attack the U.S.! It’s so simple that I don’t understand why no other president has thought of it. Or done it. Like G.W. Bush. Or Ronald Reagan.
I would suggest, Sammy, that you read Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius’s column from yesterday, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-cairo-and-libya-attacks-point-to-radicals-jockeying-for-power/2012/09/12/d0d687d2-fcff-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html. But I’m guessing that you’re not into that kind of thing. So I’ll just recommend it to people here who are.
Bev,
You need to quit defending this guy. He is (at best) a lazy empty suit. He reads off a Teleprompter AND THATS IT.
We have had no hands on the rudder for 3 years and now the damage is being revealed. Do some research on the suits/empty chairs’ work ethic and accomplishments. They are non existent.
“Do some research on the suits/empty chairs’ work ethic and accomplishments. They are non existent.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php
sammy, please go play somewhere else, now. Grown-ups are talking here.
I have read elsewhere that Romney and Netanyahu are old friends. I suspect that Romney’s view of the Middle East is strongly influenced by good ole Bibi who presently is agitating to blow up Iran and any of his neighbors who displease him. Maybe it’s not surprising that a presidential candidate who’s down in the polls is shooting off his mouth about something he clearly knows nothing about. We have been in the democracy building business in the Middle East for more than 10 years. It’s time to build our democracy at home. NancyO
sammy,
Romney and his little boots caligula clone Ryan want to run an empire. They have no interest in foreign policy other than to reopen failed weapon keynesianism, to plunder the US.
Read the constitution the part about what the president does. It says nothing about putting regimes in power and keeping them there in other sovereign countries, that is Hitlerite foreign policy.
Putting democartic regimes in place, what you mean by that is guys like Thieu whom the US had to attack North Vietnam to weaken his political enemioes whom the US decided could not have elections?
How elected is Karzai? How democratic is the stitched together coalition in Baghdad?
ilsm
Nancy,
Bibi, used to be a color agitprop guest on Fox News. He has risen and is a big player in the AIPAC, neocon, military industry complex perpetual war cabal, who will use Mc Carthy tactics to question the patriotism to the empire (not the cnstitution, but no one will call it) of anyone not going along with the Bibi’s militarist approach to Israel’s problems.
In recent months the palestinian cause has made inroads in the UN general assembly and in time politically the Bibi/AIPAC world view will be marginalized.
Their answer is lost cause perpetual war, and Ryan said it yesterday; anything less than a military attack on Iran for Israel is “contempt” of the neocon world view.
No one in the press will call Ryan or Romney on their insistance upon the US entering further down the cavern of neocon/AIPAC empire.
ilsm
ilsm
you are undoubtedly right. but “empire” has been the fate… and policy… of every major power since Cyrus.
it is inevitable. one would like “our guys” to be ethical and smart, but you know, power corrupts.. both morals and intelligence.
coberly,
True.
I intend to reread Walden and On Civil Disobedience soonest.
Thoreau refused to pay taxes because of the 1846 Mexican adventure, which was considered such by others who were far less outspoken.
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
ilsm
ilsm
again you are right. the fact that “empire is inevitable” does not make me willing to cooperate with it.
but it is unlikely i will even write a book that gives encouragement to others (as Thoreau did). I suppose I could watch it on TV.
but i won’t.