Saturday, September 08, 2012

Obama Challenges Romney On Foreign Policy -- With His Record?

It is admittedly comical to hear Obama challenge that Romney is inexperienced on foreign policy -- just consider how green Obama was, both in terms of lack of accomplishment as a Senator and just plain inexperience in foreign affairs.

But as Alana Goodman points out, the key is not to challenge Obama on his inexperience in foreign policy -- rather Romney should challenge Obama on his foreign policy blunders as president:

Just look at the national security accomplishments that Obama touts most often: killing bin Laden and ending the war in Iraq. Neither denote any remarkable foreign policy prowess on Obama’s part, and the premature withdrawal from Iraq is hardly something to celebrate. (Both were also made possible by Bush administration policies — the former due to intelligence collected through interrogation methods Obama opposed, and the latter due to the withdrawal timeline in Bush’s Status of Forces Agreement).

As for the rest of Obama’s foreign policy record: Afghanistan is a disaster; the Russia reset is a joke; Guantanamo Bay, which Obama insisted was a major national security hazard during his 2008 campaign, is (fortunately) still open; Obama’s efforts at detente with enemies fell flat; Iran has made significant inroads in its quest for nuclear weapons; the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is as stalled as ever; and Syria’s Assad’s slaughters continues. The list goes on.
Goodman writes that if Romney in fact does not take advantage of Obama's disastrous foreign policy decisions, then he will deservedly end up ceding the issue of foreign policy expertise to the Obama campaign.

Let's hope it does not come to that.

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