About a month ago, in the first Republican presidential candidates’ debate, Mitt Romney tried to explain how he perceives threats to the U.S. from the Middle East: “This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They also probably want to bring down the United States of America.”
It seemed to impress the Republican faithful, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda, for example, have nothing to do with one another. The latter is a terrorist organization; the prior has renounced violent jihad and, in some countries, participated in elections.
Romney was articulating a national security strategy that conflates groups, sects, and agendas that have nothing to do with one another. Last night, his GOP competitors started doing the same thing.
Wolf Blitzer asked Rudy Giuliani, for example, whether he’d use nuclear weapons against Iran to prevent the country from completing a nuclear program. The former mayor said he wouldn’t “take any option off the table,” adding:
“Iran is a threat, a nuclear threat, not just because they can deliver a nuclear warhead with missiles. They’re a nuclear threat because they are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism and they can hand nuclear materials to terrorists. And we saw just last week in New York an attempt by Islamic terrorists to attack JFK Airport; three weeks ago, an attempt to attack Fort Dix.”
Now, the plots at JFK Airport and Fort Dix weren’t nearly as serious as Giuliani has suggested, but more importantly, what did they have to do with Iran? Nothing. For Giuliani, they were Islamic radicals, and Iran has Islamic radicals, ergo, they should be lumped together.
Giuliani was hardly the only one.
Blitzer asked Mike Huckabee whether he has confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Huckabee responded:
“I want to remind all of us on this stage and the people in the audience that there’s a reason that this is such a struggle. And I think we miss it over here in the West. Today’s the birthday of Ronald Reagan. We all would believe that Ronald Reagan is the one who ended the Cold War, and Ronald Reagan is the one who helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“But there’s a group of people who don’t believe that, and that’s the Taliban. They believe they brought about the demise of the Soviet Union because of the way they fought in Afghanistan.”
First, yesterday wasn’t Reagan’s birthday (it was in February). Second, Huckabee responded to a question about Maliki by talking about the Taliban. Maybe this was some kind of attempt to dodge the substance of the question — though I don’t know why Huckabee would be reluctant to criticize Maliki — but it sounded like he believes the Taliban are somehow involved with the violence in Iraq.
McCain wasn’t quite as ridiculous, but he did offer this:
“[Terrorism] is a force of evil that is within our shores. Look at the events of the last few days at JFK, attempts at Fort Dix, the London suicide bombers.”
In reality, the only thing those three plots have to do with one another is that none was as serious as advertised. (This may be the transcendent issue of our time, but if so, why can’t the candidates come up with better examples?)
One gets the sense that we’re looking at some kind of misplaced machismo. The GOP candidates can say, “I hate terrorists,” and prove it by conflating groups and events that are entirely unrelated.
Is this all it takes to be considered credible on national security in conservative circles?