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The Shameful Politicization of the Benghazi Consulate Attack by Juan Cole, juancole.com | October 11, 2012
The Tea Party Congress, having, with Paul Ryan’s leadership, deeply cut funds for embassy security, held a hearing on Wednesday on the circumstances of the attack on Sept. 11, 2012, on the US consulate in Benghazi, in which it tried to point fingers at the State Department and the Obama administration. That’s right, the Republicans cut funds for embassy security, and now are blaming the State Department for laxity. read more »Benghazi: Who Can Take These Hypocrites Seriously? by Michael Tomasky, thedailybeast.com | October 11, 2012
The admission this morning on CNN by Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz that he's "absolutely" voted against administration requests for increased embassy and consulate security funding should, in a rationally ordered world, put an end to this whole Benghazi business. I mean, it really takes a set of onions to do this. Vote down increased security funding, then a tragedy happens, then try to exploit it to help your presidential candidate because it happened to occur in September of an election year. This deserves the word disgusting. read more »Mitt’s Advisors: He Has No Clue On Foreign Policy by Russ Baker, whowhatwhy.com | October 11, 2012
It must be really frustrating to work for “respectable” news organizations. Sometimes, things must make you want to scream like Howard Beale did in the movie Network. Most of the time, you’re stuck pretending that things are only slightly amiss when, in fact, they are totally wigged out. Take, for example, a recent New York Times assessment of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy positions. The headline, “Romney Remains Vague on Foreign Policy Details,” was about as restrained as it could be. But read a few excerpts, and you see what is really going on. read more »Killing the Kids that Don’t Need to Die by Bill Moyers, OurFuture.org | October 10, 2012
Written with Michael Winship. Matt Sitton knew the war in Afghanistan was going badly. He knew it because he was fighting it. He could see for himself. Twenty-six years old, with a wife and child back home, Staff Sergeant Sitton was on his third combat tour there. read more »Romney’s Living in a Fantasy Land by Christopher Dickey, thedailybeast.com | October 10, 2012
When Mitt Romney gave his defining speech on foreign policy Monday, he showed he had a magnificent sense of history’s drama and almost no clue about its realities. But maybe that’s what passes for vision these days: using a simulacrum of the past to cobble together a fantasy about the present and the future. The most striking and heartfelt theme, threaded all the way through the address in various guises, was a passionate longing for what are remembered as the glory days of the Cold War. Ah, for the days when the world was divided into good guys and bad guys, and we were not only good, we were great! And the bad guys lost and … well, never mind what happened after that. read more »Overwrought Empire: The Discrediting of U.S. Military Power by Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com | October 10, 2012
Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century. You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism -- think of it as the real “American Century” -- from World War I to the end of the Cold War, with time off for a destructive stalemate in Korea and a defeat in Vietnam too shocking to absorb or shake off. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, it all seemed so obvious. Fate had clearly dealt Washington a royal flush. It was victory with a capital V. The United States was, after all, the last standing superpower, after centuries of unceasing great power rivalries on the planet. Within a decade, pundits in Washington were hailing us as “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.” And here’s the odd thing: in a sense, little has changed since then and yet everything seems different. read more »Romney’s Incoherent Foreign Policy by William Boardman, consortiumnews.com | October 10, 2012
The big takeaway from Mitt Romney’s big foreign policy speech on Oct. 8 is that there’s no big takeaway. The Republican presidential candidate’s foreign policy speech does not lay out any coherent foreign policy. Amidst the platitudes and vague generalities, the implied bellicosity and patriotic sentimentalities, there’s no sense of proportion, no sense of scale, little indication of priorities, and no bright, quotable line that crystallizes the candidate’s Romney Doctrine beyond a “vision for a freer, more prosperous, and more peaceful world.” read more »Mitt Romney’s Most Dishonest Speech by Fred Kaplan, slate.com | October 9, 2012
Mitt Romney has delivered a lot of dishonest speeches in recent months, but Monday’s address on foreign policy may be the most mendacious yet. It was expected that he would distort President Obama into a caricature of Jimmy Carter. But it was astonishing to watch Romney spin a daydream of himself as some latter-day George Marshall, bringing peace, prosperity, and hope to a chaotic world—this from a man who couldn’t drop in on the London Olympics without alienating our closest ally and turning himself into a transcontinental laughingstock. To the extent that Romney recited valid criticisms of Obama’s policies, he offered no alternatives. To the extent he spelled out specific steps he would take to deal with one problem or another, he merely recited actions that Obama has already taken. read more »The Truth About Attacks on Our Diplomats by Adam Serwer, Mother Jones | October 3, 2012
To hear Republicans explain it, the protests at US embassies around the world and the attack on a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead are a result of the Obama administration "projecting weakness." As the details behind the Benghazi attack come to light, it's becoming increasingly clear that the White House's initial assessment of the attack as spontaneous rather than preplanned was inaccurate. But behind the comparisons to Jimmy Carter and the references to "peace through strength" is a dubious policy critique: not just that Obama is Carter and Romney is Reagan, but that somehow sufficient man-musk from an American president can dissuade any potential terrorist from laying his finger on an American diplomat. read more »The Foreign Policy Divide by Roger Cohen, The New York Times | October 2, 2012
An election that was supposed to be about domestic policy but has produced little clarity in that regard (perhaps the debates will help) has demonstrated a stark divide on foreign policy. In the vision of President Barack Obama, America is now in the status-management business: being realistic about its power the better to exercise and preserve it. As for Mitt Romney, he belongs to Putin’s school of foreign policy. The status quo he believes in is that of three decades ago. In this regard he is a closet Russian even as he denounces Moscow. And so, for Romney, Russia is “without question our number one geopolitical foe,” just like during the Cold War. He is “guided by one overwhelming conviction and passion: this century must be an American century,” like the century that saw the Cold War. Romney’s vision is pure nostalgia. It imagines a world that is gone. read more »
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Even as political pressure grows to reduce the federal budget deficit, a blue-ribbon board led by former top national security officials called on Thursday for more spending on weapons systems. read more »
Panel Seen Approving F-35 Engine, Risking Veto, The New York Times | July 27, 2010
Despite increasing calls from lawmakers for deficit reduction, one military program opposed by the White House and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates — an alternate engine for the joint strike fighter — so far refuses to die. read more »
Education Funds Out of Senate War Bill, Politico | July 23, 2010
The Senate sent back to the House Thursday night a stripped-down $59 billion war funding bill, after striking all of the added education assistance which Democrats had wanted to avert threatened teacher layoffs in the fall. read more »
Defense Contractor: It’s ‘Important’ That Taxpayers Keep Wasting Money On Weapons System Nobody Wants , wonkroom.thinkprogress.org | July 8, 2010
Last month, the House of Representatives passed the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization, including funding for a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet that the Department of Defense has repeatedly said it doesn’t want. read more »
U.S. Ramps Up Withdrawal From Iraq, USA Today | August 31, 2009
The U.S. military is packing up to leave Iraq in what has been deemed the largest movement of manpower and equipment in modern military history — shipping out more than 1.5 million pieces of equipment from tanks to antennas along with a force the size of a small city. The massive operation already underway a year ahead of the Aug. 31, 2010 deadline to remove all U.S. read more »
Senate Rejects Additional F-22 Fqunding, CNN | July 22, 2009
The Senate voted block expansion of one of the country's most controversial and expensive defense programs, the F-22 fighter jet program. The vote gave the White House and Pentagon a key victory over congressional supporters of the F-22, many of whom represent states and districts where jobs are tied to the production of the jet. read more »
Deaths of U.S. Troops Exceed 5,000 In Wars, USA Today | July 21, 2009
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached two solemn milestones Monday: July has become the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the combined death toll surpassed 5,000. Four Americans were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Robert Carr said. That brings the number of U.S. servicemembers killed so far this month to at least 30. read more »
U.S. Report On Terrorism Detainees Delayed 6 Months, Reuters | July 21, 2009
A key report ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama as part of his effort to close the internationally condemned Guantanamo prison will be delayed six months, but officials insisted they were still on track to shut it down by January. read more »
