While the president has been hard-pressed to articulate just what America’s priorities were during the Arab Spring, his de facto policy has been to accommodate the political rise of radical Islam.
There should be no doubts about the fact that such a policy as this serves the interests of no one more than Iran’s Supreme Leader and the leaders of al Qaida — psychopaths who dream of an apocalyptic demise for Western influence in the world.
Today, the president’s policies signal America is pleased to watch a proliferation of religious extremism across the Muslim world. Particularly aggressiveness toward the West that’s now being harnessed by Iranian operatives and al Qaida, while being bolstered by the Muslim Brotherhood’s permissiveness to just about anything that challenges U.S. interests, including the Iranian Navy’s use of the Suez Canal.
Furthermore, as talk won’t deter Iran from attaining nuclear weapons — clearly, cyber warfare is but a stalling tactic — Mr. Obama’s impish policies suggest he’s pleased to accommodate the proliferation of nuclear weapons into the hands of blood-thirsty Islamists who are anything but “rational actors.” Namely, Iran’s Supreme Leader and his minions in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, which manages Iran’s relations with al Qaida, Hezbollah, and other terror groups.
Afghanistan and Iraq should be focal points, too. For no one but the radical leaders of Iran, who are now using Iraqi airspace to arm their murderous ally in Syria, and President Obama have benefited from America’s premature withdrawal from Iraq. And the Afghan Taliban, which has buddied up to Iran, is comfortably awaiting the arrival of President Obama’s deadline for troop withdrawals to reclaim ownership of Afghanistan.
Mitt must also note these are not the only places we see a surge of anti-Americanism leftism unchecked by President Obama, whose administration just congratulated dictator Hugo Chavez for his “re-election.” Yet the most glaring example beyond these venues is not in Venezuela, but in Russia.
Vladimir Putin is not our friend. He is a Cold War relic who was programmed by his KGB handlers to do one thing above all else: Hate America.
Republicans are not stuck in a “Cold War mind warp,” as Barack Obama recently put it — but Vladimir Putin absolutely is. And Republicans aren’t the ones who think willful blindness to such realities should be part of the American foreign policy process. But Barack Obama does.
These are but some of the details Mitt Romney should throw down next. China would require its own essay. Meanwhile, Mitt might also be well served to describe the implications of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy failures in these terms: All of us are now packed in a bus that’s speeding down a two-lane highway with no brakes, and a swerving tractor-trailer hauling toxic cargo is heading our way — and fast.
Mitt Romney is America’s last hope for putting sanity back in the driver’s seat of the American foreign policy process. Barack Obama can indeed tout more foreign policy-making experience than the GOP nominee. Yet as we see with so many of the president’s efforts, he has yet to demonstrate any acumen for the job at hand. Killing Osama bin Laden was not an Obama administration policy — it was a decision the president had the pleasure to make after his predecessor’s oft-criticized policies proved successful.
Michael S. Smith II is co-founder and principal of Kronos Advisory, a counter-terrorism adviser to members of the United States Congress, and a senior analyst with Wikistrat. Follow him on Twitter via @MichaelSSmithII.
