Listen to today’s press call here.
Read the column on Romney’s foreign policy advisors here.
Washington, D.C. — Today the Center for American Progress Action Fund held a press call responding to Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech delivered today at the Citadel and released “Romney’s National Security Team Is Like the Second Voyage of the Titanic,” documenting the slew of foreign policy bungles Mitt Romney’s advisors advocated for in the past and still cling to. Romney’s lack of foreign policy experience and lack of leadership all led to a foreign policy speech based more on personal attacks against President Barack Obama than substantive proposals to deal with the challenges that we face as a nation.
“I think we heard today why Mitt Romney is never going to be president. He seems unable to break out of the desire to pander to his audience and just tell them exactly what he thinks they want to hear. It would have required some real leadership to go to a military audience and tell them the hard truth that, unfortunately, the defense budget is going to have to be cut. But he didn’t do that,” said Ken Gude, CAPAF’s Managing Director for National Security. “It would have then been some leadership to tell the American people if he wants to raise defense spending, where he is going to find that money, but he didn’t do it. He spent a long time in his speech describing a world that is very chaotic and extremely complex, and a long series of challenges that the next president will face but he didn’t identify a single hard choice that he would make—everything was easy. … this speech from Mitt Romney was very long on criticism of President Obama and very short on any substantive solutions about what’s going on. I think Mitt Romney, in this speech, sounded a lot more like a pundit than a president.”
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was unable to address the tremendous success that the United States has had under President Obama’s leadership in eliminating more Al Qaeda leaders in the last two and a half years than any time since September 11, the ending of combat operations in Iraq, the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, or the toppling of Qaddafi in Libya. Though he mentioned the threat of a nuclear Pakistan, he offered no plan to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons and despite predicting a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2015, his only proposal was to institute a review of operations there. Romney’s concrete proposal to increase the shipbuilding program from 9 to 15 ships again criticized Obama, though the president’s proposal of nine ships is higher than the level of shipbuilding at any time during the Bush administration.
Mitt Romney revealed yesterday the national security advisors (22 special advisors as well as leaders of 13 separate regional and issue-specific working groups) behind his plan to ensure the 21st century is an American Century (making sure the United States remains dominant in political, economic, and military terms). This is the second go-round for this crew and a Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative think tank. The last time they tried this strategy, they brought us the war in Iraq, which former Reagan administration head of the National Security Agency Gen. Bill Odom called “the worst strategic disaster in U.S. history.” CAP’s column on Romney’s foreign policy team includes details on his advisors including:
- Romney advisors publicly urged the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to stop nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in 1998.
- Romney advisors publicly urged the overthrow of Hussein in response to 9/11 and to ensure Middle East peace.
- Romney advisors don’t understand the enormity of mistakes in Iraq, and they lied to the American people about it.
- Romney advisors are still urging more troops stay in Iraq.
- Romney advisors want war with Iran and a new nuclear arms race.
- One Romney advisor was too Islamophobic for Rep. Peter King.
Listen to today’s press call here.
Read the column on Romney’s foreign policy advisors here.
To speak with CAP Action experts on this topic, please contact Christina DiPasquale at 202.481.8181 or [email protected].
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