Mitt Romney is delivering a major policy speech today in which the former governor will present his “Comprehensive Strategy For Winning The War On Terror.” His campaign leaked a 600-word excerpt from the speech, but it didn’t include a single reference to the war in Iraq. What’s more, Romney’s stump speech reportedly ignores Iraq altogether.
Iraq is the most pressing issue for U.S. policy makers, it’s the number one issue on the minds of Americans, it is sure to be the biggest challenge facing the next president, and Mitt Romney doesn’t want to talk about it?
As it turns out, Romney’s not the only top-tier Republican candidate avoiding any discussion of the war like the plague. Josh Marshall put together a fascinating video piece showing Rudy Giuliani — signature issue: national security — going to almost comical lengths to avoid discussing Iraq policy.
The fact that Giuliani blew off the Iraq Study Group renewed interest in the subject, but TPM started doing a little digging and noticed that “Giuliani somehow, under the radar, has consistently been ducking the issue of Iraq — what to do about Iraq, how important Iraq is, almost everything about Iraq — consistently, over the course of the last year.”
It sounds implausible — how can a leading GOP presidential candidate avoid talking about the dominating issue of the day? — but take a look at the video montage TPM put together. It’s striking just how much Giuliani will dance to avoid talking about war policy.
From Josh’s clip:
Let me give you a few examples: a short time ago Rudy published what he called his 12 commitments. These are a series of bullet points – the things he’ll do as president, the promises he’ll make to the American people. Iraq doesn’t show up once on the list. And actually the New York Times asked him about this — Iraq’s such an important issue, how can you not address it in your twelve commitments?
Well here’s what he said: “Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people. But what we do know for sure is that the terrorists are going to be at war with us a year, year and a half from now.” So Iraq — hard to say, we may win, we may lose, I can’t tell you. That’s a really funny thing for a presidential candidate to say, but it turns out it’s what he’s been saying pretty much consistently when the Iraq issue comes up. It’s basically a two-pronged talking point he has: the first is, Iraq isn’t actually that important, it’s just a small piece of the war on terror. And what will happen in Iraq? Well, that’s hard to say and I cant make you any promises.
In some ways, Giuliani and Romney seem to be carving out a “third way” rhetorical approach to the war. On one side, we have supporters of the war, who insist that the future of civilization is dependent on our success in Iraq. If we fail (if we haven’t already failed), the region will ignite in a massive conflict, terrorism will reign, and the U.S. and its allies will face even greater threats.
On the other side, we have opponents of the war, who insist that national security demands that we get out of the middle of this conflict. It’s creating more terrorism, making us less safe, and weakening our military.
Giuliani and Romney seem to be taking a different tack altogether: Iraq? No biggie.
How anyone takes these guys seriously is a total mystery.