Romney's foreign policy

Unexpectedly busy day.  You’ll have to make to for a while with this spot-on observation from Steve Benen:

But if Mitt Romney’s campaign actually believes its own rhetoric about foreign policy, the Republican and his aides aren’t just embracing bravado; they’re alsoslipping into delusions.

Advisers to Mitt Romney on Thursday defended his sharp criticism of President Obama and said that the deadly protests sweeping the Middle East would not have happened if the Republican nominee were president.

“There’s a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you’d be in a different situation,” Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign policy adviser, said in an interview…. Williamson added, “In Egypt and Libya and Yemen, again demonstrations — the respect for America has gone down, there’s not a sense of American resolve and we can’t even protect sovereign American property.”

Again, I don’t know Williamson personally, and his comments to the Post may be little more than partisan chest-thumping.

I’m more concerned, however, with the notion that Williamson might actually believe his own nonsense.

In Team Romney’s mind, the protests in the Middle East, and the deadly raid on the consulate in Libya, are President Obama’s fault. Why? Because Muslim protestors don’t “respect American resolve.”

If Romney were in office, the argument goes, there wouldn’t be protests — angry Muslims simply wouldn’t take to the streets because they respected America too much.

Presumably, I don’t need to deconstruct that for you.  I don’t think I’d need to deconstruct the foolishness of that to my 12 year old son (who turned in his current events report on Libya today).

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