 by Jordan Michael Smith |
COMMENTARY
John Kerry had some fun Thursday night with Mitt Romney's failure to mention Afghanistan in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last week. But Afghanistan wasn't the only glaring foreign policy omission in Tampa. In Condoleezza Rice’s 2,000-word speech on Wednesday night, the word ‘Iraq’ did not appear. Excepting remarks by an Iraq War veteran, not a single speaker at the convention mentioned the defining foreign-policy decision of the Bush administration.
The GOP wants the public to forget that Republicans got America into a disastrous, unnecessary war, of course. But the larger problem is that conservatives simply have not acknowledged the failure they unleashed in Iraq, let alone learned from it. To judge both from Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and his advisors’ track records, when it comes to foreign policy, a Romney administration would be a second Bush administration.
Consider Mitt’s pronouncements on foreign affairs. According to his book, revealingly titled No Apology, the media “took the early view that Iraq was a hopeless quagmire.” Does Romney now think Iraq was a great success? Romney also defended Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous, blithe remark that ‘you go to war with the army you have.’ And of course, in 2007 Romney said that the United States should double Guantanamo.
More recently, he has parroted the bellicose rhetoric that proved so disastrous in the Bush years. Obama “abandoned our friends in Poland by walking away from missile defense commitments,” Romney said in Tampa. As it happens, earlier this month the Polish president slammed his government’s previous decision to host elements of the missile defense system as a “political mistake.” 57% of Poles were opposed to the idea of hosting a US missile defense system, according to polls. Romney thinks we should have stuck to a commitment to Poland that Poles don’t want it!
Romney also has repeatedly slammed the president for seeking to engage with Iran, implying—without ever coming out and saying—that he'd be quicker to use military force His stance recalls Dick Cheney’s comment that “We don’t negotiate with evil—we defeat it.” We all saw how that worked out.
Meanwhile, Romney is stacking his foreign-policy deck with veterans of the Bush administration. Bush’s ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, also spoke at the convention, and is rumored to be promised a top spot in any Romney administration. As recently as 2010, Bolton defended Iraq as a “very easy question” and told British journalists that their country was “on a road to national suicide” if they could not see the threat Saddam Hussein posted. Bolton has also suggested the U.S. should invade Syria and Iran, which would quite literally repeat the mistakes of Iraq. Then there's Dan Senor, who is said to be personally close to Romney. He said that Romney would back an Israeli military attack on Iran, which is a tacit encouragement of another war in the Middle East. Senor was Bush's top Iraq spinner when he served as a top spokesman for Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority chief who disastrously disbanded the Iraqi military that fueled the insurgency.
In total, the Romney team boasts a staggering 37 former members of the Bush administration. And yet there's been essentially nothing from the campaign about the lessons of Iraq. That icludes from Romney and Paul Ryan themselves, both of whom supported the war.
Perhaps that's no surprise. When you haven't bothered to think through the lessons of America's biggest foreign policy failure in a generation, you're not likely to have much to say.
Jordan Michael Smith is a Contributing Writer at Salon.
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And HE, Romney thought that we should have stayed there LONGER.
The gop-neo-con-Nazi's Haven't come to terms with Iraq -- Well That Is NO Surprise - They Still Haven't Come to Terms with The Civil War / Voters Rights / Freeing Slavery / Health-care / Women's Rights ...etc. etc. etc.... Bunch -O- COMMIES !!!!!
Truely, out-of-the-ballpark, fantastic commentary!! Jordan Michael Smith, thank you and may I express my deep appreciation for your presentation of informative facts and analysis.
Obviously, I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THIS COMMENTARY REACH EVERY AMERICAN VOTER, EVERY DAY, THROUGH NOVEMBER 6TH!
Not than I am unwilling to support a just war. I supported our efforts in Afganistan and Libya, and I want to do more for Syria, but, I prefer that, when it is required, we use our smarts and use diplomacy, allies, and economic weight, to get a specified task done with a fully understandable ending event, to leave.
Again, Thank you!
As President Obama said last night in his acceptance speech, Romney and Ryan are new - so they are likely to make such mistakes. Of course, as republicans, what else can they say about Iraq and Afganistan? But even then, they still want to spend extra $2 Trillion on military in the next 10 years - doing what? They don't know. Hope people don't fall for this kind of rhetoric again.
Unfortunately though, many spineless democrats, including Hillary Clinton, supported the Iraq war.
Ironic that the 'War Monger Party' made no mention of both wars they started. Also ironic that a party that screams so loudly of patriotism candidate did not even bother to thank the troops in harms way right now.
Something wrong with the msnbc sites today? When I open a page it goes all the way to the bottom by the comments and won't let you go anywhere else. If I scroll back up to the top it goes back down as soon as I take my finger off the mouse. Anyone else having problems?
Over here in the UK I remember such grotesques as Bolton & Rumsfeld on the news trying to persuade us Brits to follow the Good Old USA in its policies in Iraq. I think they earned the dislike of people watching them, & the main person who followed Bush's follies - Blair himself - has become, as a direct result, hated and despised by an awful lot of UK citizens. He could never enter politcs again, at least the politics which depends on ordinary people voting, & couldn't really show his face at any Labour Party Conference; even the mention of his name causes booing.
I remember Condi's trip to the North of England; - pursued by jeering mocking crowds at her every event. None of that Confederacy of Dunces would find a very warm welcome in this country. Still, if the Olympics is anything to go by, Mitt has surpassed even his GOP predecessors in general antipathy. We in 'Old Europe' do not like GOP attitudes and that air of pseudo-superiority that some blinkered idiots have perfected over the last generation. The only redeeming feature of our current Prime Minister would be if he stood up to the absolute foolishness of the current batch of Republicans; he might just, remembering Blair's legacy.
This is somewhat correct. But the writer uses the term Conservative to refer to Republican hacks or neoconservatives. And he conveniently forgets the duplicity of democrats.
Most democrats gave Bush a blank check on Iraq. And the one's who did not never really gave a rational for voting no. They simply vote no on virtually any military engagement.
The most cogent essays explaining how this was a strategic disaster were written by people like General Bill Odom -- one of the original founders of the Hudson institute, and Lawrence Korb -- assistant Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan. And they were voicing these views well before the invasion.
Still, it does appear that Romney is not interested in Conservatism, or listening to Conservatives in areas of foreign affairs.
The Republican Party remains a neoconservative party in this area -- to the party's detriment.