Romney’s “sharpenned attack” is a big disappointment. The best that, Mitchell Reiss, a top Romney policy adviser, said in an interview, was:
“What would the governor do differently? It really starts with having a vision for the future of the Middle East, supporting those that have been shortchanged by the administration. There are things that we can do in terms of what we say, the constancy of what our vision is — pluralism, respect for law, human dignity — these are things that you don’t hear from the administration, and the people in the region want to hear that.”
Romney is still not prepared to take Obama on on his choices, like bringing down Mubarek and Gadaffi and embracing the MB at home and abroad. He has stood for intervention is Syria but not for rejecting the MB there. He is clearer on the support he would give Netanyahu on Iran but still not clear enough. Its one thing to support “pluralism, respect for law, human dignity”. its another thing to articulate how this would translate into policy. Ted Belman
By Philip Rucker,September 14, WaPo
Advisers to Mitt Romney on Thursday defended his sharp criticism of President Obama and said that the deadly protests sweeping the Middle East would not have happened if the Republican nominee were president.
“There’s a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you’d be in a different situation,” Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign policy adviser, said in an interview. “For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated.”
[..]
Williamson added, “In Egypt and Libya and Yemen, again demonstrations — the respect for America has gone down, there’s not a sense of American resolve and we can’t even protect sovereign American property.”
The aggressive approach by Romney’s campaign thrust the issue of foreign policy to the forefront of the presidential campaign a day after the Republican candidate was widely criticized for blasting Obama while U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya were under attack.
Criticism from Republicans over their nominee’s handling of the situation overseas quieted Thursday, with influential voices in the party’s foreign policy establishment rallying to Romney’s defense. And it was Obama who faced criticism for saying that he did not consider Egypt an ally — a comment that his administration struggled to explain.
“The president can’t even keep track of who’s our ally or not. This is amateur hour — it’s amateur hour,” said Williamson, a former assistant secretary of state and ambassador. He was among those who counseled Romney to respond aggressively on Tuesday night and was offered by the campaign to speak about the candidate’s foreign policy.
Williamson was referring to Obama’s interview Wednesday night with Telemundo in which the president said that the U.S. relationship with Egypt was a “work in progress.”
“I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy,” Obama told Telemundo. “They’re a new government that is trying to find its way.”
Administration officials tried throughout the day to parse Obama’s statement on Egypt without appearing to contradict him.
Obama was right in “diplomatic and legal terms,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said, because “?‘ally’ is a legal term of art” that refers to countries with which the United States has a mutual defense treaty such as the NATO alliance.
But the United States tried to work around just that problem in 1989, creating the designation of “major non-NATO ally” for countries on which it wanted to bestow approval, weapons sales and defense cooperation prohibited to non-treaty nations. Egypt — along with Israel, Australia, Japan and South Korea — was among the first countries to be so designated that year.
Pressed to explain why a “major non-NATO ally” is not an ally, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland repeated the treaty argument, then referred reporters to the White House. Later asked whether the United States still considers Egypt a “major non-NATO ally,” Nuland said “Yes.”
[..]
But his campaign responded by noting that the protests this week were triggered by the video, not by U.S. policy, and that the video likely would still have been produced if Romney had been president. And they noted that there have been attacks on Americans under every president in recent history, including Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
[..]
Responding to statements made by GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney accusing the Obama administration of apologizing for U.S. values, President Obama told CBS Romney has a tendency “to shoot first and aim later.”
Romney himself struck a more measured tone and tried to refocus on his core economic argument on the campaign trail Thursday in Northern Virginia. He did not mention Obama by name, but suggested that the president was a weak commander in chief and unreliable guardian of American strength abroad.
“As we watch the world today, sometimes it seems that we’re at the mercy of events instead of shaping events, and a strong America is essential to shape events,” Romney said at a rally in Fairfax County.
The approach on foreign policy by the Romney campaign is a signal that it feels it can gain some advantage in an area that has so far it has found problematic.
In addition to the criticism Romney received on Wednesday, he came under fire two weeks ago for failing to mention the war in Afghanistan or acknowledge U.S. troops serving abroad in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. In July, his tour through Europe and the Middle East was marred by missteps. And he has been ridiculed for his assertion that Russia is, “without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe.”
“We were ready for a major debate on this,” Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official and foreign policy adviser to Romney, said in an interview. “It just happened to blow up now. It’s there, and it’s in some ways a clarifying moment.”
In debating foreign policy with Obama, Romney is perceived to be at a disadvantage. The president consistently has outpolled Romney on the issue, and he earned high marks for the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief political strategist, rejected the suggestion that voters may question Romney’s temperament and commander-in-chief credentials because of his early and aggressive response to the attacks in Egypt and Libya.
“It’s not an issue,” Stevens said in an interview. “It was an issue with Barack Obama four years ago, given the fact that he was younger and had little experience, and given his answers in the debates. He had stumble after stumble with foreign policy. Mitt Romney hasn’t. He’s run for president twice now and it’s not been his problem.”
Romney’s policy advisers laid out steps that a President Romney would have taken in the Middle East that they said Obama has not done.
“What would the governor do differently? It really starts with having a vision for the future of the Middle East, supporting those that have been shortchanged by the administration,” Mitchell Reiss, a top Romney policy adviser, said in an interview. “There are things that we can do in terms of what we say, the constancy of what our vision is — pluralism, respect for law, human dignity — these are things that you don’t hear from the administration, and the people in the region want to hear that.”
Romney’s campaign hopes to force a broader debate about America’s role in the world and to argue that while Obama has been successful in fighting terrorism, his foreign policies have resulted in waning U.S. influence abroad.
“We’ve got Barack Obama with a risk-adverse, lead-from-behind approach, and how’s that worked?” Williamson said. “We not only have the events in Egypt and Libya and now in Yemen, but we have in Syria 20,000-plus people killed, many by means of various atrocities by a regime, and the Obama administration is missing in action.”
Canadian Otter Said:
My guess is that it’s enormous. I have never seen so many scandals with top officials as in Israel. I wondered whether Sharons give away of Gaza was in relation to the scandals affecting his family and the possibility of foreign agencies revelations of such. We all know that digging dirt on public officials is the easiest way to manipulate politicians. This is a known expertise of intelligence agencies. Therefore when a political ppositon is unexplained by known logic I usually look for other possibilities. Israeli politicians, judges, etc are probably being extorted and blackmailed on an ongoing daily basis to reflect the dictates of the foreign intellignece agencies. Hence for so much intelligence gathering in the middle of tel aviv. Furthermore, installing a politician who can be controlled in such ways is another approach to obtaining a puppet from scratch: this might explain Obama. One should ask the question when considering a politician: whose interests are his decisions serving?
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
A deliberately avoided subject – US secret and not-so-secret activities within Israel.
We only get vague references regarding the US government’s sordid activities within Israel. The media does not dare to mention the subject. We don’t even know the number of US military personnel in Israel, much less how many US civilian staff, contractors, operatives, etc.
There are so many questions. What’s their influence over top officials in government and the IDF? How many tentacles do they have in Israeli government institutions, and how deep do they go? Are they just waiting for an Arab uprising to take full control of Israel (on “humanitarian grounds”) in order to demolish the Jewish nature of the country? Is that why the Israeli government tries so hard to avoid Arab-Jewish confrontations and treats the Arabs with so much TLC?
There needs to be more media coverage about US surveillance and micromanagement of Israel, their military presence, and their ever tighter control over the Israeli government and military.
I’m glad you raised this subject, Shmuel. I hope you and other Israeli readers will offer more information on this subject from simple observation and uncensored reports.
PS: It’s good, though, that Israelis are the very best at electronic counter-surveillance. 🙂
@ Canadian Otter:
A sampler characterizing the vicious underbelly of the US administration.
The US Representation in Tel Aviv, (Embassies must be in our Capital, Jerusalem), is located at HaYarkon St., a very high priced area. The very large complex, bristling with spy electronics aimed at Israeli interests, is “protected” by a full US Marine group, many CIA and NSA operatives and a complement of Israeli security experts. No one escapes even from long distance, detection. The ambassador private residence is not less “protected”.
I would not doubt if all other US Embassies to civilized countries would be just as much “protected”.
Now, I ask you all, why would the fellowship sinking the US chose to disarm US operatives ONLY in Muslim countries?
I wonder…
@ Laura:
It is really up to the American voters to decide in which way they want to move on with the self sinking process. Re electing the item now there, is surely going to aid the sinking until it will be completed. Because a 16.2 trillion debt which is not payable in cash or gold or goods is unlikely to go away. Neither sabotaging Israel will save their tails. Surely all normal folk worldwide is now aware that to make sure that the US governing system is a total screw up, the completely incompetent Soetoro-Obama, who never held a real job or was formally trained to serve at high level positions on behalf of the US people and Constitution got a present bought with foreign moneys and become a ghastly, sabotaging, undermining, so called president.
Islamics in general commit murderous suicide individually, the US administration is clearly bent on doing it collectively.
Netanyahu may represent a very small country but has exposed the ill intentions of the Washington aggregate. In acouple of weeks or leas the whole charade will play iteslef out. Netanyahu may still spike the ball though.
NO ONE cares about the angle of the US administration sinking protocol not even those that the quasi or total Muslim at the WH cowardly tried to influence.
The US voter, in particular the so called Jewish, assimilated fellowship is fully entitled to elect at will. The US may not survive their decision, but then again, that may well be their intention.
@ Dick Schwanz:
Well Dick,
From 1939-1945 HaShem was preparing to re-populate The Holy Land of Israel with Jews who either escaped or survived the Holocaust prior to the establishment of the modern State of Israel. He knew that the Jews again would need to have a Jewish army after 2000 years of dispersion amongst the nations (gentiles). An army of Jewish warriors who would defeat the many Arabs that would try to destroy the fledgeling Jewish state. The Jewish state that was prophecized in the Hebrew Scriptures as promised by HaShem. So, Dick, as to reality and imaginary; what you perceive as reality is actually far removed from the sub-atomic and cosmic worlds of existence. You might say we are all living in a matrix behind which is the Word of HaShem Who Created it from nothing and keeps it in existence from moment to moment. In reality, we are nothing, there is only HaShem/G-d.
@ dick schwanz:
You cannot comment with a fictitious lewd name and phoney email.
Hi Laura
With the same response Romney’s is working out, with a bunch of hahas.
Nobody can do anything about it. It will have to work it’s way out. Money seems not to be doing it, but I think jealousy is behind a lot of it, which makes Israel and the U.S. the biggest targets.
@ catarin:
How’s Hussein Obama’s vision for the Middle East working out for us?
The Obama lackey (mass media) ridiculed Romney!!! The Mass media became IRRELEVANT.
Never before in this country did the mass media fail so much the American people.
This is a fundamental pillar of communism: the control of the mass media by one party.
@ Bill Narvey:
There is NO viable foreign policy with a weak economy. Are the American people so stupid that they cannot understand one sentence!
@ zechariah823:what I found more odd was MOrsi’s Iran trip and their Intellignece agency talks. The egyptian riots remind me of the Iranian riots when the hostages were taken.
Everybody wants to get Romney philosophy on everything in a five minute speech. That is ridiculous. He may not even have yet clearance from the SD.
What do people want from him.
Very soon he will have to fully explain his policies on the economy and foreign policies.
One sure thing is that he will provide full support to Bibi (at least back-up) if he decides to deal with Iran. With Obama, the use of ambiguity against Israel means that he may not provide assistance to IL.
2000 years of antisemitism by one group and 13 centuries by the other will never disappear. There is a FUNDAMENTAL “jealousy” by a large segment of the humanity (white men and Muslim men) against the Jews (Not the Chines, not the Indians, curious!). Although half of the Jews apologize and feel guilty and even undermine their own people, there is no reason for apology. Fairness is not a basic law of the UNIVERSE. That does not mean that we should not strife for it. But not with apologies.
Fundamental core values of Islam are antithetical to Western values (religious and secular). Either we submit to them or fight them. There cannot be any compromise.
The West (mainly the people responsible for foreign policies) have still not ingest the concept of DECEPTION practiced systematically, every day by the Muslims. This is a essential weapon of war for the Muslims. How obtuse are the western diplomats?
What Arab say in English or other languages is always the opposite of they tell their masses in Arabic. And the American mass media bloviate out of sheer ignorance. It is PATHETIC.
@ dick schwanz:Thanks Dick, in that case they can save some money and just take intrades “findings”
Mitt has a vision for the Middle East? hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha.
Don’t you find it a bit odd how on the very day (September 11, 2012) Barak Obama told Benyamin Netanyahu that he has no time to meet with him concerning red lines for Iran, the USA ambassador and his security detail in Libya are murdered and subsequently all the Arab/Muslim middle east mess spreads and falls on the heads of the United States representation in these Arab countries? Hmm, Odd or G-d? Plagues of Egypt falling on the USA? Floods, Drought, Hurricanes, what next Pestilence??? I truly believe that if the USA continues to turn its back on Israel, then HaShem will hide his face (blessings) from the USA. Will the USA population again choose the ‘child of Ishmael’ (Muslim in the White House) for 4 more years? Will over half the USA population fight G-d again??? Do I want to see what disaster this will bring about? No. I really am not looking forward to a Nimrod and Tower of Babel ending for the USA where the USA population finally comes to the realization that, “HASHEM IS G-D”.
The world is burning effigy’s of Obama.
Looks like the fraud is going up in flames too.
Nothing but crickets coming from the white house.
Economy Bombshell: Audit the Fed exposes 50 trillion money laundering scheme – http://beforeitsnews.com/fedgate/2012/09/audit-the-fed-discovered-mainstream-media-blackout-money-laundering-scheme-confirmed-50-trillion-dollars-videos-2431900.html
And this news from Beibart: Budget cuts for embassies security ahead? – http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/14/Obama-releases-sequester-report-cuts-defense-embassy-budget
Though not wanting to admit it, many at Israpundit are failing to grasp that regardless of how much justified criticism Romney can heap on Obama for his foreign policy failures, most Americans will judge Obama favorably when it comes to foreign policy.
For most Americans, their assessment of Obama on foreign policy will be bassed simply on his having ordered Bin Laden killed and his ordering successful drone strikes against Anwar al Awlaki and other al Qaeda and splinter group Muslim terrorists. Why do you think the WH leaked those details if not to shore up that favorable impression of Obama.
Romney has no experience in foreign relations. While it is true that Obama did not have any experience either when coming to the WH, he can lay claim to that experience now.
The economy and jobs are Romney’s strong hand and he will have to use that hand to constantly pound Obama if Romney is to have a decent chance of winning the election.
Bull! He didn’t misstep at all. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and culture is why Israel is superior to her neighbors.
What planet are Americans living on that they would give Obama high marks on his catastrophic foreign policy? They simply aren’t paying attention.
TO TED – your spam filter is completely out of control. I just posted two short comments on two separate columns and it set them aside for moderation. The second one was deliberately mild, with no words that could set an alarm.