Romney: Obama has led America to "atrophy"
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) / Mark Lennihan
(CBS News) Mitt Romney is out with a foreign-policy focused op-ed where he criticizes President Obama's strategy in the Middle East for lacking coherence and resolve. In his prescription for success, Romney connects success overseas with economic success domestically.
"President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy," Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
"Our military, tested by a decade of war, is facing devastating cuts thanks to the budgetary games played by the White House. Finally, our values have been misapplied--and misunderstood--by a president who thinks that weakness will win favor with our adversaries," Romney wrote.
Tying in the importance of domestic economic security to international defense, Romney bashes the current state of economic affairs. "Our economy is stuck in a 'recovery' that barely deserves the name. Our national debt has risen to record levels," he wrote.
Pointing to ongoing challenges in the Middle East, including the civil war in Syria, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon, Romney wrote that the U.S.'s standing in the world matters, calling recent developments "dangerous."
"If the Middle East descends into chaos, if Iran moves toward nuclear breakout, or if Israel's security is compromised, America could be pulled into the maelstrom," the Republican presidential candidate wrote just five weeks before Election Day.
The op-ed comes one week after Romney delivered his most encompassing foreign policy speech at the Clinton Global Initiative conference where he said American-aided economic development would result in greater stability overseas.
Romney's foreign policy strategy has received criticism after he failed to mention the war in Afghanistan in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. He also came under fire from some in his own party for jumping the gun in his response to the protests that started outside of the United States embassy in Cairo earlier this month. Romney released a statement, which criticized the Obama administration's handling of the event, while events on the ground were still unfolding. Amid protests outside the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
The president, meanwhile, has faced his own foreign policy challenges in recent weeks. He has been criticized for not meeting with international leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while in New York for the opening of the United Nation's General Assembly. His ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, initially said the anti-American protests that quickly spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa were "spontaneous," but the administration days later said the attack that killed Stevens was a terrorist attack.
"He does not understand that an American policy that lacks resolve can provoke aggression and encourage disorder," Romney wrote. "In this period of uncertainty, we need to apply a coherent strategy of supporting our partners in the Middle East - that is, both governments and individuals who share our values."
Romney said Americans would see "no daylight between the United States and Israel" and "the ayatollahs must be made to believe us" when the U.S. says a nuclear weapon in Iran is unacceptable. Romney also said he would use "soft power" to ensure "liberty and opportunity" to emerging democracies in the Middle East.
Heading into the first presidential debate, which will focus on domestic policy, Romney wrote that domestic economic security will be crucial to renewing international strength.
"[T]his Middle East policy will be undermined unless we restore the three sinews of our influence: our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values. That will require a very different set of policies from those President Obama is pursuing."
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FactCheck: Obama's outsourcing claims about Romney are an overreach
5:48 PM, Jun 29, 2012 | by Jennifer Jacobs | Comments Categories: Iowa Politics Insider
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Some of Team Obama's claims that Mitt Romney is a "corporate raider" who "shipped jobs to China and Mexico" and would be an "outsourcer in chief," are false, while others are thinly supported, according to FactCheck.org.
Those themes are a steady refrain in television ads running in Iowa, and Vice President Joe Biden made his two-day Iowa trip this week one long screed on outsourcing.
FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit voter watchdog website run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
There is no question that Bain Capital, Romney's venture capital firm, invested in some companies that helped other companies outsource work and that some work went overseas, the factcheckers say in a report posted today.
But FactCheck.org found no evidence that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas. The checkers reviewed corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, news accounts, and evidence offered by both the Obama and Romney campaigns.
The fact checkers examined two Obama ads, "Come and Go" and "Revealed" - both of which began running in Iowa on June 20.
"Revealed" slams Romney's promise to crack down on China's trade practices by saying "all he's ever done is send them our jobs."
But it cites a Washington Post article that contains no examples of U.S. jobs being shipped to China while Romney was working at Bain, the fact checkers found.
"Come and Go" uses the term corporate raider, but it's simply inaccurate, FactCheck says.
"Bain didn't engage in hostile takeovers when Romney was at the helm," the factcheckers said.
This ad also says Romney, as Massachusetts governor, was "outsourcing state jobs to India."
"But it wasn't the state that outsourced contracts," FactCheck.org wrote. "Rather, Romney vetoed a measure that would have prevented the state from doing business with a state contractor that was locating state customer-service calls in India."
"When a majority of the people of any nation give up their inherited prerogative right to make their own way through struggle, history shows clearly that the entire nation is in a tailspin of decay that inevitably must end in extinction. The individual who not only is willing to live on the public treasury, but demands that he be fed from it, is already dead spiritually." (Napoleon Hill)
I have doubt about Romney's business acumen because of his comments regarding GM. He said GM should go into bankruptcy and it could continue in business. The reason GM almost failed is because of its debt. There was no way to restructure its debt in 2009. Its creditors would not agree to take any loss on a restructure when credit default swaps would pay them more money if GM defaulted on its debt. And the banks had no money to loan. So, the only thing that would have happened after a bankruptcy filing would have been GM shutting down operations and having the assets sold off. 300,000 GM employees and at least another 100,000 employees of peripheral business would have been put out of work.
Either Romney did not understand modern finances and credit default swaps or he thought another 400,000 unemployed would be no problem. That is not the kind of person we should have as President of the United States.
Clearly this is not somebody who should be reelected....way to defend evil Obama....who will Obama not pander to?
....Obama evidently likes it when the Taliban throws acid on little girls faces.
Way to defend evil Obama...
Romney will defend the girls, not Islam.
Those who slander the prophet of Islam are exercising their right to free speech. Obama attacked that right, which is exactly the opposite of what the Founders would have wanted.