OMG! Romney's Neocon Views Worse Then Bush!

[Gayle in MD]

I'm just going to quote the first and several of the last paragraphs...We've got to stop this nutjob in his tracks!




<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Presidential contender Mitt Romney has laid out his vision for a foreign policy in a Romney administration – and it looks like it could have been dreamt up by the same neocons who guided George W. Bush’s disastrous pursuit of permanent U.S. military dominance.


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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
“Too often,” he declared “these bodies prize the act of negotiating over the outcome to be reached. And shamefully, they can become forums for the tantrums of tyrants. . . . The United States must fight to return these bodies to their proper role.”

Nor did he see any reason to obey them — or the international law they represented — when it did not suit the U.S. government. He observed: “While America should work with other nations, we always reserve the right to act alone to protect our vital national interests.”

Romney’s speech was also noteworthy for the international issues he did not address. They included nuclear arms control and disarmament, global climate change, world health (such as the AIDS epidemic), and the tottering global economy.

Presumably he did not consider these important — or at least capable of being dealt with through the instrumentalities of a massive military buildup and an American century.

One wonders what citizens and statesmen of other nations think of this potential world leader who argues that his country is confronted everywhere by malignant enemies, must forever be militarily supreme, is exempt from following international law, can do no wrong, has been created by God, and must dominate the planet for the rest of this century.

Perhaps, in addition to questioning whether Romney is ready for the world, we should ask: Is the world ready for Romney?

Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is emeritus Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press)





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Read the whole article here, unless you want to sleep well tonight.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27026


You can bet we'll have crumbling brides and hungry people, and wounded vets accumulatitng for years, if this Neocon nutjob gets in there!

G.

[Gayle in MD]

It gets worse!


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<span style='font-size: 14pt'> Is Mitt Romney a Neocon Purist?



By Robert Parry (about the author)

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Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has proclaimed a set of foreign policy goals that reprise the neoconservative agenda of the Project for the New American Century, but the Washington Post's neocon editors still chide him for not being hawkish enough.

On Saturday, the Post editorial, "Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy Failings," notes that Romney suggested on the campaign trail that "U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be withdrawn 'as soon as we possibly can' and that the war showed that Americans 'cannot fight another nation's war of independence.'"

The Post cites those comments as raising concerns that Romney "might be positioning himself to the left of President Obama."
Poor Romney. Here's a guy who assembled a team of neocon retreads to write his foreign policy white paper, "An American Century." He allowed the title to be an obvious homage to the neocon Project for the New American Century, which in the 1990s built the ideological framework for the disastrous Iraq War and other "regime change" strategies of President George W. Bush.

Romney even recruited Eliot Cohen, a founding member of the Project for the New American Century and a protégé of prominent neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, to write the foreword. And Romney still can't get the neocon editors of the Washington Post to overlook his suggestion that the Afghan War shouldn't be endless.



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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-Mitt-Romney-a-Neocon-Pu-by-Robert-Parry-111015-236.html

[Gayle in MD]

AND WORSE!


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> On Afghanistan, Mr. Romney fortunately moves away from his advocacy of quick retreat, but he does not clearly spell out an alternative policy. He says he would “speak with our generals in the field” about how best to draw down U.S. troops; in one interview he suggested the result could be either a speeding-up or a slowing-down of Mr. Obama’s timetable. This will not reassure those who worry about a resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Mr. Romney does promise to “reverse” the Obama administration’s cuts in defense spending and to increase investment in Navy ships and missile defense. But he offers no hint of where the hundreds of billions needed to deliver on that promise would come from, though he proposes trims in the Pentagon bureaucracy.

Mr. Romney speaks correctly but in generalities about the need for U.S. leadership. Apart from defense, his most distinctive proposal is on China: He says he would declare Beijing a currency manipulator on “Day One,” opening the way to retaliatory tariffs. In vowing to get tough on Beijing, Mr. Romney follows previous non-incumbent presidential candidates, including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; upon election, his predecessors backed down rather than ignite a trade war. If his pragmatism and common sense prevail, Mr. Romney would do the same.

In all, the policy Mr. Romney lays out is centrist but unimaginative. It lacks some of the rough edges of the George W. Bush administration — Mr. Romney pledges that “the United States will exercise leadership in multilateral organizations and alliances” — but there are few fresh ideas. In contrast, Mr. Huntsman is relatively bold but decidedly more misguided: His promise to “bring home” U.S. troops so as to rebuild an American “core” he views as “broken” sounds like an updated version of George McGovern’s “Come Home America” campaign of 1972. Americans didn’t buy it then; it would be surprising if GOP primary voters lined up for it now.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/m...jskL_print.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romneys-foreign-policy-failings/2011/10/11/gIQAOGjskL_print.html)

[Gayle in MD]

AND YES.... EVEN WORSE!!!!


<span style='font-size: 14pt'> <span style='font-size: 14pt'>THe Last Neocon Standing: </span> </span>

The former Massachusetts governor seems ... to have considered the case for foreign policy restraint. Alone among the top-tier GOP presidential candidates in 2008, he refused to say whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct in hindsight. Romney drew a rebuke from Sen. John McCain for seeming to equivocate about the success of the surge. McCain chastised Romney again just this summer for appearing too willing to exit Afghanistan. It seems that Romney has since decided to move in the opposite direction. He now resists further cuts to the defense budget, arguing instead that military spending should be increased. He argues for a larger role for the U.S. military on the world stage. He warns against “isolationism” — though the country is now engaged in three wars.

It is indeed the least-remarked upon development in this campaign. As the GOP field began to tackle the consequences of the Iraq catastrophe with some actual candor, Romney smacked the debate down with a pure reprise of Bush post-9/11. One critical question in this coming election is whether the US is going to back West Bank settlements and bomb Iran (the Likudnik policy platform). Romney insists on no daylight between the US and Israel (meaning Israel's interests will always trump the US's) and the threat of military action against Iran. What would Romney do in office? On his own, anything that might win support. But with his neocon brigade of advisers? The mind boggles. Mark Krikorian holds out hope for 2016:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/10/the-last-neocon-standing.html