Romney foreign policy: Bush 2.0

The GOP frontrunner is putting the band back together, tapping the team that brought us two wars says Joan Wash of Salon.com

Mitt Romney is proving he’s the establishment Republican in the race by doing what establishment leaders do — recruiting the shadow government in waiting, the stars of the last GOP administration, to return to their rightful place of power. In Romney’s case, that means calling on the old, failed foreign policy hands of the George W. Bush administration. 

Yes, Romney’s putting the band back together, tapping a foreign policy team known for its failures in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as its inability to track down the al Qaida leaders responsible for 9/11. That was just another job they left for President Obama, and one that he in fact completed. On Friday, in a major foreign policy speech scheduled for the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan war, Romney likewise sounded Bush-Cheney themes. It was long on saber-rattling, short on details – and wrong about the few details he deigned to share.
Romney promised to reverse President Obama’s “massive defense cuts,” except the president didn’t make cuts, massive or otherwise. The defense budget jumped from $661 billion in 2009 to $768 billion in 2011. Defense is the area, in fact, where Obama followed the Bush team lead most closely. 

The GOP frontrunner pledged a “full review” of our options in Afghanistan, which seems a strangely passive response to a much-analyzed 10 year old war. By contrast, he was happy to war-monger about Iran, calling the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon “unacceptable” and “nothing less than an existential threat to Israel. Iran’s suicidal fanatics,” he added, “could blackmail the world.”