Following a phone call from Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Obama has repeatedly blamed the attacks and riots on a video critical of Islam’s prophet. For example, he used his Sept. 25 speech at the United Nations to declare that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
Romney’s “speech showed no understanding in how to deal with [Egypt's government] because they are in very serious economic trouble,” Albright said.
Islamist “extremists” will be boosted if the government fails to manage the country’s crippled economy, she charged.
“They need to create jobs … so that there are not extremist elements that then get a greater role … [and] by conditioning it so much, it looks again they are responding to our orders and not the people that elected them,” she said.
The brief 20-minute phone conference was begun by LaBolt.
If Romney wants to criticize Obama, “bring it on,” he taunted.
Romney is “erratic and unsteady” even as the president offers “tough, steady and responsible” leadership, he said.
Romney want to keep troops in Iraq, LaBolt said, but “how’s he going to turn the page on the failed policies of the past?”
GOP-affiliated foreign policy advisers say Obama’s leadership has been weak, and have repeatedly highlighted a 2011 quote from an Obama insider who characterized the president’s approach as “leading from behind.”
On Iraq, the GOP experts say the president failed to ink an agreement that would have allowed a small U.S. force to stay in Iraq and fend off Iranian pressure. The negotiations failed after Obama directed the stay-behind force be reduced to 3,000 troops, which is too small to reassure the Iraqis and not large enough to defend itself from Iranian-sponsored attacks.
Since the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the Iranian government has continued its likely development of nuclear weapons, suppressed a popular revolt and used Iraqi airspace to fly weapons and reinforcement to defeat rebels seeking to topple Syria’s embattled dictatorship.
