Mitt Romney has been talking tough on Iran lately. In an op-ed last month in the Washington Post, the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee wrote:Matches or Dynamite?
I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Only when they understand that at the end of that road lies not nuclear weapons but ruin will there be a real chance for a peaceful resolution.
Romney added that he’d restore aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf region. And he closed with this stark warning: “Either the ayatollahs will get the message, or they will learn some very painful lessons about the meaning of American resolve.”
“The easy, quick fashion in which he disposes of the Iranian problem by indicating that in effect, he would be using force, is very troubling,” Brzezinski pere told the gang. “I don’t think a presidential candidate should be playing around with matches that way. This whole thing can become explosive, disturbing, and destructive.”
Joe Scarborough noted that in recent times, the Republican Party has been split between realists like James Baker and Colin Powell, and the neo-conservatives who pushed for war in Iraq. “If you look at the people who are around Mitt Romney, he’s surrounded by neocons,” said Scarborough.
One thing the panel didn’t mention: A centerpiece of Romney’s criticism of President Obama on foreign policy has been his charge that Obama has gone around the world “apologizing” for America -- he even called his campaign book "No Apology," an effort to emphasize what he sees as the contrast between his own approach and Obama's. The only problem: Independent fact-checkers have established that the claim is basically a fabrication.
President Obama is playing around with fire, Romney has the fuse on a stick of dynamite lit already.
This "No Apologies" strategy, aside from being a lie, is also wrong. When you make a mistake, it is best to admit it, otherwise you end up repeating them, just as we are doing now.
How many asinine battles is the US going to fight anyway. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, were all idiotic. The US should apologize for mistakes made in those countries.
Fools never apologize. Romney is an arrogant war-mongering fool hell-bent on waging yet another asinine war to prove the "meaning of American resolve".
Such idiocy was the basis for the War in Vietnam, the War in Iraq, and a 10-year long ongoing war in Afghanistan that the US public was fed up with years ago.
History shows "American Resolve" lost the war in Vietnam and will skedaddle from Afghanistan as well unless Romney is stupid enough to stay the course there as well.
As bad as Obama is on foreign policy, Romney is worse. I cannot and will not vote for either Romney or Obama. Many independents feel the same, and they will be the key to the election.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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