Foreign policy is taking on new urgency in the presidential campaign as President Barack Obama prepares to address the United Nations amid a resurgence of unrest in the Muslim world and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, intensifies his criticism of the White House's approach to the region.
The president will condemn in his speech Tuesday to the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly the anti-Muslim video that sparked protests, according to excerpts of his speech. Violence in Libya led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, after a storming of a U.S. consulate in Libya.
Mr. Obama will refer to Mr. Stevens multiple times in his speech, citing the ambassador's approach to the region to challenge the U.N. to denounce the violence that has taken hold there and to underscore the values the U.S. is seeking to promote abroad with its policy toward the Arab Spring.
Mr. Obama also will stress the importance of those in the region condemning slander against Christians and Jews, people familiar with his speech said.
Mitt Romney, of course, stuck his head out his Learjet window and shouted down prematurely:
Mr. Romney accused the president Monday of playing down tumult in the Middle East, saying the U.S. needs to exert stronger leadership and that the president needs to do more to shape events abroad.
This is what they believe, believe it or not. It doesn't matter that the US has been instrumental in freeing Arab nations left and right. It doesn't matter that we do this at great risk and peril to not only our own populace, but those of Israel and Turkey, and by extension, NATO and Russia and China.
No. We have to walk around the globe like it's our own private Muscle Beach, flexing and preening (key word, that) like a musclebound oaf.
Diplomacy, peace and real security only come about when you respect the sovereignty and rights of the peoples of other nations. It only takes one side to say "Today, I will not commit war," and war will end eventually. If the goal is peace, then the less the army is used, the better the chances of achieving it.
True strength comes not from deploying troops at the drop of a hat, or against people who hold no harm towards us. I don't know that anyone disagrees with the original intent of a war in Afghanistan: to root out and destroy Al Qaeda and its allies.
And had that been the first war since World War II, I don't think anyone could find fault in deploying troops there. We would have been viewed as just and right, and would be dealing now from a position of world strength, our word being the only weapon needing deployment.
Unfortunately, this nation has a large segment of "fapscists," people who believe that regimenting the world in all senses of the world is the best way to achieve peace and security, when it only generates resentment and hatred. And then they'll say "they hate us for our freedom."
They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we don't want them to have that freedom.
The only apologies that America needs to make is that these asshats are dense and douchey but are allowed a megaphone instead of a kazoo.
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