Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues to try to lay out what he insists is a distinct position on Iran from President Obama, today trying to set out “red lines” and likening his stance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“My own test is that Iran should not have the capability of producing a nuclear weapon,” Romney said, but he went on to insist that he believes there is “a long way to go” before that line is crossed.
Which makes his claim of a Netanyahu-style position difficult to swallow, since the Israeli Prime Minister was apparently of a mind to start a war sometime this month before political and diplomatic pressure put the kibosh on it.
In the past Romney has openly faulted President Obama’s position on Iran, but every time he speaks on the matter he lays out a position functionally identical to the incumbent, and it seems that in practice his position is different only rhetorically, and is the “same” as Netanyahu only to the extent he believes cozying up to the Israeli hawk can win him votes.
Today’s “red line” as usual lacked any clarity, as there is no way to decide what constitutes a “capability” to produce a weapon for a nation with an active civilian program and no weapons grade uranium. In theory, virtually any nation with uranium mines and a basic level of technological competence has such a “capability,” but while those seeking to start a war always claim Iran to be mere months from following through on the matter, the simple fact that they aren’t making a nuclear weapon keeps this timetable entirely theoretical.
The US seems to be the major country fond of crossing boundaries – those of Iraq, Afghanstan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia come to mind. Take the beam out of your own eye before you criticize the splinter in others.
The more this man opens his mouth, the more I wonder why anyone could possibly even think of voting for him – other than the obvious injustice that his opponent looks different than Mitt and the majority of his "base" – if he even has a base. The label of Mitt being an empty suit just doesn't even come close to fully explaining the complete lack of substance and depth of this man. Even Dubya stood before the voters and told them what he believed in and you could tell he believed it himself. Mitt doesn't pass the smell test.
Mitt don't need a foreign policy or understand the fine points of what is going on in the world because if elected president, all foreign policy decisions will be made by the same group of Zionist neocons who conducted George Bush's presidency. It is true that Obama has been a disaster on auto-pilot, but putting the neocons back in charge (by electing Mitt Romney) would be nothing short of condemning the country to 4 more years of George Bush.