Romney and Reagan: A world of difference

By Larry Klayman

If this week's foreign-policy debate proved anything it is that Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan when it comes to international matters. While I personally would like to see him elected president — even my now-deceased cat would be better than the Muslim in chief, Barack Hussein Obama — his performance last Monday lacked conviction and courage. He seemed to be slinking around the stage in Boca Raton like a Florida gator that had fallen in love with a Florida panther. At least 10 times during the debate, Romney figuratively kissed Obama, defying the old saying that "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." The spectacle was simply not kosher.

Sadly, that is why I hope in my heart of hearts that Romney was lying to the American people when he "threw in the towel" to Obama's weak and destructive pro-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-American foreign policy and performance. Ronald Reagan, to the contrary, never backed down and refused to praise then-President Jimmy Carter for his equally disgraceful and defeatist foreign policy on Islamic Iran and the communist Soviet Union when they debated in 1980, at the height of the Iranian hostage crisis. At the time American diplomats were falsely imprisoned and mentally tortured in our Tehran embassy for over a year, as Carter repeatedly got down on his knees begging the mullahs to release them. Soon-to-be-President Reagan kept to his principles and held his ground — and he did so with humor and grace, making his so-called hard-line positions sellable to those undecided voters Reagan was wooing. But Romney, with the cynical political calculation and intellectual dishonesty of the Karl Roves of his Republican Party, simply took an exit stage left, trying to take the issue of foreign policy out of the voters' minds so they could focus on the "economy stupid" prior to the elections. Here is how he did it:

Within minutes of the debate's commencement, like a school boy, Romney conceded with apparent glee that he agreed with Obama on the timetable for removing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Previous to the Boca Raton debate, Romney had taken opposite positions. But not wanting to appear to be a "warmonger" to the undecided voter, Mitt threw in the towel. And, while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been poorly conceived and fought — through no fault of our brave and valiant military men and women but instead the stupidity of the Bush administration and now Obama and company — Romney's quick validation of the Muslim in chief's decisions to leave precipitously created the impression that if Obama can be right about this, then is he may also be right about how to restore the economy. It was simply unnecessary and stupid to agree that Obama had done anything right, because he has not. Obama's motives have been to further the Muslim revolution, as in his heart I believe he sees himself as Muslim and part of Allah's cause to have Islam spread over the world, as I have written about in many prior columns.

Indeed, just yesterday it was reported by the Wall Street Journal in a front-page article, "Iranians Build Up Afghan Clout," that the neo-Nazi mullahs in Tehran have been buying influence in Afghanistan such that the Afghans are more loyal to their Muslim Iranian brothers than to their "savior," the United States. All the while, Obama and the leftist minions in his administration have stood by and watched Islamic revolution occur in Syria, Egypt and a myriad of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Under these circumstances, Romney should not have agreed with Obama about anything!

And, in this vein, Romney was not through with his cop out. Dodging the question of whether he would support an Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if the Jewish state was forced to unilaterally launch it without warning (remember that the U.S. government has been leaking classified Israeli war plans) — Romney extolled the virtues of economic sanctions against the Islamic regime as a way to say cleverly that he was not anxious to go to war. Regrettably, it is too late to have these sanctions work — sanctions have never worked — and the only option at this point is to take out the nuclear threat by force. Reagan would not have dodged this issue, but Mitt, who is no Reagan, did. Ironically, it was Reagan's rival in 1980, Jimmy Carter, who tried economic sanctions to force the Soviets to get out of Afghanistan after they had invaded, and these sanctions too proved less than worthless in achieving the desired result.

The next night, comedian Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show" joked about the Iranian sanctions. Leno quipped "One of the president's winning points last night was about how sanctions against Iran are crippling their economy ... and believe me if anyone knows how to cripple an economy it's President Obama." While Leno's joke was hilarious, Romney's validation of the Iranian sanctions as the primary means to rid Iran of its nuclear capability was simply a bad joke, which I am sure the Israelis did not find funny. If I were Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this would signal that Romney may ultimately prove to be not much better than Obama — a president who will not join in forceful military action to remove the threat of an Iranian nuclear Holocaust — and thus provoke the Israelis to attack even sooner than predicted.

The bottom line is this: Romney may have played a "clever" political game during the Boca Raton debate, but he further revealed himself to be the total "pol" that he is, not bound by principle or purpose. Reagan, to the contrary, was elected president because he demonstrated an intellectual honesty to the American people, and then when in office stuck to his western guns.

Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan, although he is better than the traitorous Muslim in chief. And that is our choice this Nov. 6.

© Larry Klayman