The Foreign Policy Speech Romney Should Give www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com By Robert A. Hall
Good evening, my fellow America Patriots. I use that phrase advisedly, because it is American Patriots—those who love this country and cherish our system of free political institutions, free enterprise and limited government—I wish to address. You and I know those institution have made us a prosperous and happy people and our country both a shining ideal to which the world’s poor and oppressed want to come, and the target of those who loath liberty.
From the founding of our Republic to the events of the present day, those institutions have been under assault from enemies abroad who hate our freedom and prosperity, and from misguided individuals at home who believe that they can create an all-powerful and utopian government that can better make decisions for you than you can for yourself. They believe that America’s constitution and prosperous economic system are no more entitled to a claim of exceptionalism and our loyalty than any other system or culture.
We have seen the results of that utopian belief in unlimited government power on our prosperity. We have seen it in a job crisis that has kept the official unemployment rate above 8% for years, and the real unemployment rate, counting those under-employed, those who have had to take part-time jobs, those whose benefits have run out and those who have given up looking, that is far higher than 8%. We see it in the continuing weakness in the housing market, in the unprecedented growth of government debt, and in private sector businesses--which the president says are doing fine—increasingly unwilling to expand investment to create jobs in the face of government growth and economic uncertainty.
And we see it in the failure of this president’s foreign policy on diverse and disastrous fronts across the globe. It is of President Obama’s manifest foreign policy failures that I wish to speak to you tonight.
It is no secret that far too many in the media believe the duty of a journalist is not to present unbiased facts to American voters to let them make up their own minds, but to advocate for an agenda, shaping the debate so as to help the president’s political campaign, even at the expense of the country. We saw that when they were inadvertently caught on tape, like the president promising the Russian strongman more flexibility after the election, coordinating their “gotcha” questions to help the Obama campaign.
In support of their efforts to politicize the news and to shape the agenda, they have created the meme that it is not what is happening in the world that is the problem, but rather my speaking out about it. The same people who cheered then-Senator Obama in 2008 and Senator Kerry in 2004 when they criticized President Bush’s foreign policy while American troops were in battle now insult your intelligence by saying that this president’s foreign policy should be off limits during a campaign, or that criticism of him is based not on his clear failures but his ethnic heritage. Unfortunately, this contemptible lie propagated by the Obama campaign water-carriers in the media resonates with some voters who are less attuned to events and less inclined to seek out the facts.
The facts are these. What we are seeing today across the world is the direct result of perceived American weakness, of this president’s unwillingness to champion American values and to support America’s friends like Israel and the friends of freedom like the Iranian resistance against those who wish both us and freedom ill.
We see an American Ambassador and his staff murdered with the connivance of the very people this president sent American troops to risk their lives for and billions of your tax dollars to aid. We see American soil in American embassies assaulted by radicals in coordinated attacks by whipping up mobs over the excuse of a poorly-made, little known private video, while governments to whom we have given billions of your tax dollars in aid turn a blind eye, secure in the knowledge that this administration is so eager to buy them off, it will go on paying tribute regardless of their actions.
We see it in timid half-measures toward Iran, even as they seek nuclear weapons while promising the destruction of America and Israel. Must we lose New York City, Washington DC or Tel Aviv before we get serious about dealing with the mad mullahs?
We see it in the willingness of a tyrant like Hugh Chavez to suppress freedom in his country while threatening American interests and the security of his neighbors, secure in the knowledge that his leftist rhetoric makes him off limits to serious opposition from this administration.
We see it in an administration willing to provide thousands of guns to ruthless Mexican drug cartels, destabilizing that country and killing hundreds of Mexicans and two American agents, to further their anti-gun agenda. And then they lie and withhold information to cover it up.
We see it in an increasingly aggressive China willing to muscle both our allies like Japan, South Korea and the Philippines as well as their old allies like Vietnam, secure in the knowledge that our strong natural desire for good economic and political relations with them, and our need for their continued funding of a portion of our burgeoning debt means that we must acquiesce in their domination of their smaller neighbors.
We see it most of all in the unwillingness of this administration to name the enemy that seeks to destroy our way of life. That enemy—let us be clear—is Islamic Extremism and Islamic Supremacism. The president and leaders on both sides of the political aisle are perfectly correct in saying that we are not at war with Islam and I assure you we will never be at war with Islam under a Romney administration. Indeed, we must never forget that the most frequent victims of the daily catalog of murders and outrages by the extremists are decent Muslims who want to live in peace and freedom, seeking only prosperity for their families. But President Obama has never understood, in fact seems incapable of understanding, that it takes two sides to make peace, only one side to make war. Islamic extremism is growing, is often funded by our erstwhile friends, numbers millions of adherents and is able to manipulate the emotions of tens of millions more poor and ignorant Muslims who are understandable frustrated at the poverty created by the lack of economic and political freedom in their countries. And they are at war with us, with western civilization, and with the majority of peaceful Muslims, and have been for decades. Wishing it were not so will not change that painful fact. They give us only the options of defense, or defeat and death.
That Islamic extremism is not centrally directed as were the Nazi or Stalinist regimes does not make it either less understandable or less of a threat to our lives and liberties. That the threat can spring up undirected among our own citizens does not make the deaths of our soldiers in Little Rock or at Fort Hood any less casualties of that war than those who have sacrificed while wearing the uniform of the Republic in Iraq or Afghanistan. And when I’m president, their families will receive the appropriate recognition of their sacrifice. That is the least this country can do for their service.
This frightening growth of Islamic extremism is fed by an American posture of apologetic weakness. Over thirty years of attacks, terror and murder of Americans, westerners and their fellow Muslims should have taught us that they will always find an excuse, be it a cartoon or a clownish YouTube video to ferment violence and mob terror. We must not feed the beast. We must stand with that majority of Muslims who desire peace, freedom and prosperity. We must support those Muslims who have to courage to speak out against extremism and terror. We must lead from the front, and abandon weak euphemisms like calling war “overseas contingency operations.”
We cannot defend women’s rights and other human rights at home if we fear to speak out against the oppression of women under Shari’a Law abroad. Being for tolerance for gay people at home is meaningless if we are supinely silent about the murder of gays in Iran and other intolerant countries at the hands is Islamic extremists.
American freedom, American prosperity and the aspirations of tens of millions of people around the world, Muslim and non-Muslim, depend on American strength, American leadership and American courage. If we fear to defend liberty out of fear for our lives, we shall find we have lost both life and liberty. We must stand with the friends of freedom and against extremism and aggression and terror.
We must honor and support the service and sacrifice of our gallant troops, and those of our allies, on whom our freedom depends. The future of all decent people in the world, regardless of nationality, religion or ethnic heritage, depend on our making that American policy. The president talked of change and in our foreign policy, change now is desperately needed. As your president, I will lead us to a new foreign policy that values freedom and life and prosperity, and stands against murder and extremism and terror. And I will not apologize for it
Thank you.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in theMassachusetts Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of theAmerican Republic: And what you can do to prevent it. You can e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
