What I dread most is republican foreign policy. What Obama understands that Mitt (and any other republican) doesn't. In today's Washington Post:
Congratulations on Florida. Now that you are again the front-runner, and your campaign focus is returning to President Obama, I’d like to call attention to a line you have used repeatedly: “This is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century.” I leave it to the president to describe what he believes, but as the author of the book “The Post-American World,” let me make sure you know what exactly you are attacking.
This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we got used to over the last generation. Obama has succeeded in preserving and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has recognized these new forces at work. He has traveled to the emerging nations and spoken admiringly of their rise. He replaced the old Western club and made the Group of 20 the central decision-making forum for global economic affairs. By emphasizing multilateral organizations, alliance structures and international legitimacy, he got results. It was Chinese and Russian cooperation that produced tougher sanctions against Iran. It was the Arab League’s formal request last year that made Western intervention in Libya uncontroversial. Read more
And for the good of the nation, Romney and other GOP candidates should shut their pie holes on delicate matters that they don't know anything about. This isn't the time for wannabes. One president at a time.
It did not take long for Mitt Romney to pounce on Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s statement Wednesday that American troops could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, 18 months sooner than expected. Within hours, Mr. Romney lambasted it as “naïve” and “misguided.”
But President Obama, far from disavowing the Pentagon chief, seems eager to debate his Republican critics about a withdrawal timetable that his advisers contend is strategically sound, and which also happens to be politically popular. The White House said that Mr. Panetta’s remarks reflected the president’s resolve, supported by his experience in Iraq, not to wage a “war without end” in Afghanistan. NYT
