I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

i don't see any daylight between romney + obama on foreign affairs + war on terror except re tone.

Diplomatic skill, genuine interest and empathy, etc.

that's just a morbz open basket imho

"empathy" there

Oh well.

well who knows what romney would do re foreign policy if elected, the fact that all hes said abt it basically amounts to get tough leads me to believe he could be quite a bit worse than obama, unless hes just blustering and war w/iran is not really a thing he wants, which is completely w/in the realm of possibility

WHO DO YOU TRUST MORE ON IRAN

hes just blustering and war w/iran is not really a thing he wants, which is completely w/in the realm of possibility

All of his wild west foreign policy words have been put in his mouth imo. Of course, if he'll do it in a campaign, he'll be just as much a piece of clay in office.

my impression is that the circumstances that determine whether we go to war w/ iran or not has very little to do w/ whether obama or romney is in office

our torture has just been outsourced

like, obama has said that military intervention is on the table re stopping nuclear iran. that he will not allow iran to get nuclear weapons. and he's actually president! to believe that obama won't go to war w/ iran takes a bigger leap of faith than believing romney won't go to war w/ iran.

The Libya thing...I'm not bothered that it took 3 weeks to get the story out to the public correctly. I am bothered that there was an intelligence breakdown that allowed it in the first place. Weird how the media seems to be focusing on the former.

I said on one of these half dozen threads last week that this typical CIA botch job for which the State Department will get the blame and accusations that it's run by striped-pants pansies.

*that this IS

Diplomatic skill, genuine interest and empathy, etc.

― timellison, Tuesday, October 16, 2012 3

how do you gauge these things?

Is war really in the cards? Seems more about whether there's going to be strikes on their facilities. Much prefer Obama for dealing with the whole region on the issue.

Intuition.

like, obama has said that military intervention is on the table re stopping nuclear iran. that he will not allow iran to get nuclear weapons. and he's actually president! to believe that obama won't go to war w/ iran takes a bigger leap of faith than believing romney won't go to war w/ iran.

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 16, 2012 3:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

of course either of them would go to war w/iran depending on circumstances, that doesnt mean that itd require the same circumstances for both tho, duh

Diplomatic skill, genuine interest and empathy, etc.

how do you gauge these things?

Obamajesus

re: differences between obama and romney -- i don't actually believe that gore, if elected, would have gone to war in both iraq and afghanistan. i imagine it would have been a clusterfuck either way but i think the mess would have been a bit less sloppy.

so i think obama while not exactly a pacifist could handle things differently, just as the previous prez handled it differently than gore likely would have.

no one except bush and his cronies was going to war in iraq, that shit was so left field

Pretty sure Al Qaeda would've been so scared of a Gore administration that Osama would have vetoed the attacks.

woulda been interesting cause the gop woulda pinned 9/11 on gore in a fairly cynical way for the 2004 elections. he possibly woulda prevented it, also.

yeah, i don't think romney is going to invade like north korea. he seems a lot more practical + pragmatic than bush to me

I don't believe it for a second, Mordy. That's what Bush was in 2000 too.

romney is a total cypher but one thing that i think does emerge from the biographical fog is that he is v risk adverse

bush never struck me as practical or pragmatic

^^ what lag00n said

on the other hand i dont think he has much of a backbone and could totally be bullied by the gop into doing just abt anything

romney is a total cypher but one thing that i think does emerge from the biographical fog is that he is v risk adverse

that's true, and if you're adverse to pissing off your base, and your base is essentially the tea party now (witness Akin pulling an Akin and then everyone quietly going back to his corner once the fury died down a bit), then you're more likely to do the bidding of the far right, no?

i mean alienating his party is a risk too

He didn't look that way to me either but that's how he presented himself: all that compassionate conservative palaver and "humility" in foreign policy.

I can't think of a major policy point on which Romney has repudiated Bush.

as w bush it's not so much a question about the man as about his patrons; romney is clearly a technocrat with no discernible principles but as he also has no discernible spine i'm not partic comfortable w the idea of him being c-in-c while PALLING AROUND w the same kind of violently idealistic war nerds who got to institute their dream project in 2003

and "humility" in foreign policy.

not even in retrospect, but even at the time i think there was enough evidence to see this was pretty much a lie. the "humility" idea was put out there contra clinton's democratic-internationalism (yugoslavia, somalia). but if you read james mann "the vulcans" (which i dimly remember) bush's vaunted foreign policy wonder crew was all Team B hyperhawks from cheney on down.

romney pals around w/ the billionaires who steal peoples money not the billionaires who make bombs, it's just really hard to imagine him as a war president

he would probably outsource our military to mexican and chinese soldiers anyway

I policy I support ftr

http://t.imgbox.com/adz4svpC.jpg

Josef Stalin and his Merry Band of Bolsheviks! I want ideas from you people, that is what you're paid for.

well, that's my point, goole: I think it's a myth that Romney will govern as a moderate.

You want Team B people? John Goddamn Bolton is a senior policy advisor (and he was mentioned in Mann's book too).

a myth among who? 50% of our country thinks he'll be a noble right-winger and the other half thinks he'll be a psychopathic fascist. like 3 ppl believe he'll be a moderate.

He really seems like a guy who has taken very little interest in international politics over the course of his life. The question of the influence of guys like Bolton is a very serious concern.

oh absolutely

xp 2 alfred

romney's foreign policy team contains michael chertoff, various heads of various security consulting firms, and (specifically assigned to the middle east and north africa) a lady from rumsfeld's bullpen who published journal articles in 2000-2002 w titles like "iraq: time for a modified approach?" and "sanctions: a strategy in decline?"

where's Seward?

staring across the strait at russia

need you to make the "I can see Russia from my house" gif.

like 3 ppl believe he'll be a moderate.

Some of these so-called undecideds showing up in polls as for Romney now have bought the moderate bit he used in the debate

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/aide-mitt-romney-will-ask-obama-to-man-up-on-libya-20121016

Here's more on Romney foreign policy advisors. Man up!

yeah moderate pivot clearly working for them and clearly a focus - can you imagine a soup kitchen photo op during the primaries? interesting if 2012 actually makes vaguely true the myth of the 1980 debates - that scary conservative manages to seal election by presenting himself as acceptable, capable of governing alternative to failed, weak president.

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/morgan-freeman-to-the-rescue

honestly i fully expect president romney to start another war w/o having the slightest notion or care about its human or geopolitical implications. he's got his head permanently anchored in the sand, and he's surrounded himself with hawks.