Lucille
10-09-2012, 10:52 AM
Romney’s Pretty Little War Speech
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2012/10/08/romneys-pretty-little-war-speech/
Romney is fond of invoking Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman — and now George Marshall — as though their 20th century foreign policy legacies could lend his own cobbled-together worldview some indomitable burnish. But he seems loath to even utter the name of the American President his views are most like — George W. Bush.
But that is exactly the president who came to mind Monday when Romney gave what was billed as a major foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable bastions of southern partisan conservatism and Confederate military tradition, a virtual no-go for Democrats and mushy peaceniks, the perfect place for Romney to put on a show.
Dispensing with originality, Romney used the young cadets and the school’s history as props to give a speech that hewed dangerously to the messianic flights from reality taken by Bush and inspired by many of the folks now working for Romney, a virtual empty vessel when it comes to foreign policy experience or strategic vision.
These are the only passages you need to absorb before grabbing your children and valuables and heading for the exits:
The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts. They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East — a region that is now in the midst of the most profound upheaval in a century. And the fault lines of this struggle can be seen clearly in Benghazi itself.
The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of the same forces that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long. No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.
Before ending the 30 minute speech — which seemed to breeze by, no doubt because it was so tissue-thin — he launched into what could only be described as a return to the “either you’re with us or against us” doctrine that irresponsibly agitates religious and ethnic flashpoints, uses the threat of punishment to win over “friends” and imposes our values on a world that is already tired of our pathologies, our American exceptionalism and our Ronald McDonald politics.
Anyone who wants to go back to this — the foreign policy of the Borg, with Bush, Cheney, Rice and Wolfowitz as its chief enforcers — should get his head examined. One might examine Romney’s head right now and find that the only things bouncing around in there like ice cubes in a glass of ice water are his foreign policy advisers, who by all accounts include the usual neoconservative consiglieri: Dan Senor, Robert Kagan, John Bolton, Dov Zakheim, Walid Phares, Eliot Cohen, Norm Coleman, Eric Edelman, and more.
Add them to the jackbooted thuggery represented by Cofer Black and Mike Chertoff on Romney’s team, not to mention the millions of dollars injected into the Romney campaign by Sheldon “I wish my son were an IDF sniper” Adelson, and we have a reanimated 2002 war cabinet that makes the Dawn of the Dead look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The word over the summer was this group was frustrated they weren’t getting enough play — now it looks like they are making up for lost time — with a vengeance.
[...]
“General Marshall once said, The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.’ Those words were true in his time—and they still echo in ours,” Romney intoned.
But Marshall, remember, was also a good soldier. He was Army Chief of Staff and President Roosevelt’s top adviser during the war. As Secretary of Defense under President Truman (another neocon favorite) he helped escalate one of the most calamitous wars for our U.S. forces in the 21st Century, the Korean War. Maybe that was what Romney was really thinking, as launched into what could only be called his pretty little war speech for 2012.
[...]
He said our “friends and allies” in the world do “not want less American leadership. They want more,” and see America as the “hope of humankind.” One might ask what planet Team Romney might have landed on. I wonder if Reagan and Truman are there, goading him on and giggling behind his back. Back here in reality, this speech simply spells war.
Whether or not the American people have the appetite for that doesn’t seem to matter: Romney and his advisers are doubling down in an attempt to distance themselves from what has been a fairly hawkish four years under Obama. But Romney manages to come off as jingoistic and naive. He sounds like Bush, and that’s one specter from the pantheon he doesn’t want to raise.
Lots more at the link.
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2012/10/08/romneys-pretty-little-war-speech/
Romney is fond of invoking Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman — and now George Marshall — as though their 20th century foreign policy legacies could lend his own cobbled-together worldview some indomitable burnish. But he seems loath to even utter the name of the American President his views are most like — George W. Bush.
But that is exactly the president who came to mind Monday when Romney gave what was billed as a major foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable bastions of southern partisan conservatism and Confederate military tradition, a virtual no-go for Democrats and mushy peaceniks, the perfect place for Romney to put on a show.
Dispensing with originality, Romney used the young cadets and the school’s history as props to give a speech that hewed dangerously to the messianic flights from reality taken by Bush and inspired by many of the folks now working for Romney, a virtual empty vessel when it comes to foreign policy experience or strategic vision.
These are the only passages you need to absorb before grabbing your children and valuables and heading for the exits:
The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts. They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East — a region that is now in the midst of the most profound upheaval in a century. And the fault lines of this struggle can be seen clearly in Benghazi itself.
The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of the same forces that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long. No, as the Administration has finally conceded, these attacks were the deliberate work of terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.
Before ending the 30 minute speech — which seemed to breeze by, no doubt because it was so tissue-thin — he launched into what could only be described as a return to the “either you’re with us or against us” doctrine that irresponsibly agitates religious and ethnic flashpoints, uses the threat of punishment to win over “friends” and imposes our values on a world that is already tired of our pathologies, our American exceptionalism and our Ronald McDonald politics.
Anyone who wants to go back to this — the foreign policy of the Borg, with Bush, Cheney, Rice and Wolfowitz as its chief enforcers — should get his head examined. One might examine Romney’s head right now and find that the only things bouncing around in there like ice cubes in a glass of ice water are his foreign policy advisers, who by all accounts include the usual neoconservative consiglieri: Dan Senor, Robert Kagan, John Bolton, Dov Zakheim, Walid Phares, Eliot Cohen, Norm Coleman, Eric Edelman, and more.
Add them to the jackbooted thuggery represented by Cofer Black and Mike Chertoff on Romney’s team, not to mention the millions of dollars injected into the Romney campaign by Sheldon “I wish my son were an IDF sniper” Adelson, and we have a reanimated 2002 war cabinet that makes the Dawn of the Dead look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The word over the summer was this group was frustrated they weren’t getting enough play — now it looks like they are making up for lost time — with a vengeance.
[...]
“General Marshall once said, The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.’ Those words were true in his time—and they still echo in ours,” Romney intoned.
But Marshall, remember, was also a good soldier. He was Army Chief of Staff and President Roosevelt’s top adviser during the war. As Secretary of Defense under President Truman (another neocon favorite) he helped escalate one of the most calamitous wars for our U.S. forces in the 21st Century, the Korean War. Maybe that was what Romney was really thinking, as launched into what could only be called his pretty little war speech for 2012.
[...]
He said our “friends and allies” in the world do “not want less American leadership. They want more,” and see America as the “hope of humankind.” One might ask what planet Team Romney might have landed on. I wonder if Reagan and Truman are there, goading him on and giggling behind his back. Back here in reality, this speech simply spells war.
Whether or not the American people have the appetite for that doesn’t seem to matter: Romney and his advisers are doubling down in an attempt to distance themselves from what has been a fairly hawkish four years under Obama. But Romney manages to come off as jingoistic and naive. He sounds like Bush, and that’s one specter from the pantheon he doesn’t want to raise.
Lots more at the link.