Republicans reduced to empty rhetoric on defence: Siddiqui
Published on Wednesday October 17, 2012
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By Haroon Siddiqui The Toronto Star – Editorial Page
It’s more than his language that makes Mitt Romney yesterday’s man. His “whole binders full of women” and letting working women go home early to make dinner for kids reflect his and Paul Ryan’s social policy positions that pivot mostly on men dictating to subservient women.
The Republican duo is similarly living in the past, peddling the delusion that America can still spend trillions on defence and order an obedient world around.
Barack Obama, whatever his weaknesses at home, has been realistic about American limitations abroad amid anti-Americanism post-Iraq and Afghanistan, and the constraints imposed by the economic crisis. He still managed to be tough on security, killing Osama bin Laden and decimating Al Qaeda — leaving little for Republicans to attack him on.
So when the American ambassador to Libya and three colleagues were killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11, Romney and Ryan pounced on the tragedy to ignite the old neo-con refrain about the president being soft on terrorism.
In Tuesday’s televised presidential debate, Romney said Obama had taken days to call the incident a terrorist act. But the president did the very next day, on Sept. 12 — an assertion backed on the spot by moderator Candy Crowley of CNN: “He did, in fact, sir.”
That had Obama exhort: “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?”
Romney’s problem goes deeper than factual distortions and political mischaracterizations that are the staple of any hard-fought election. It’s a Republican problem.
The ideology of “projecting strength” and talking tough to China and others harks back to past American grandeur, at a time when power is shifting from America and Europe to the East. It’s an ideology that’s also out of touch with such seismic changes as the Arab Spring.
This has reduced Republicans to empty rhetoric, such as Romney’s incoherence Tuesday on Libya:
“This calls into question the president’s whole policy in the Middle East. Look what’s happening in Syria, in Egypt, now in Libya. Consider the distance between ourselves and Israel . . . We have Iran four years closer to a nuclear bomb . . . The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and — and — and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unravelling before our very eyes.”
Yet he is not offering any alternative to Obama.
In the Oct. 11 vice-presidential debate, Ryan and Joe Biden were asked about former defense secretary Bob Gates saying that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would not work and “could prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”
Biden agreed. Gates “is right — it could prove catastrophic.”
Ryan dodged. But he conceded that the Republicans don’t want war with Iran, either. “We want to prevent war, solve it peacefully.” The way to do that is to sound tough and allow no “daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel.”
Biden dismissed the “bluster” and “loose talk” about Iran being close to a nuclear weapon. “No, no, no, they are not four years closer to a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking recently to the UN General Assembly, held up a diagram of a bomb with a fuse and drew a red line at “90 per cent” and “final stage,” indicating how close Iran was to a bomb.
Biden said that if and when Iran acquires enough uranium, “they have to get it up from 20-per-cent” to 90-per-cent purity to make a bomb. After that, “they have to be able to have something to put it in. There’s no weapon that the Iranians have at this point. Both the Israelis and we know we will know if they start the process of building a weapon.”
On Afghanistan, Romney and Ryan agree with Obama’s 2014 departure date. But, Ryan said, “We don’t want to broadcast to our enemies, put a date on your calendar.” In other words, we should not be saying publicly what we are saying publicly.
On Syria, too, the Romney-Ryan position is the same as Obama’s — don’t commit any American troops unless to secure chemical weapons, if need be.
Biden: “The last thing America needs is to get into another ground war in the Middle East.”
Ryan: “Nobody is proposing to send troops to Syria. We agree with the same red line they do on chemical weapons.”
If so, what’s he proposing to do differently? Ryan wouldn’t answer.
Biden: “If you notice, he never answers the question.”
Or he and Romney dodge. Or they talk macho nonsense.
Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday.
Categories: Americas, United States