Mitt Romney's War on Apologies

If there's anything Mitt Romney hates more than finishing second place to Mike Huckabee, it's a foreign policy not rooted in brutish masculine testosterone. Romney has a new book out coupled with a 19-state tour, where he's taking President Obama to task for parading around the world and apologizing for Bush/Cheney-era foreign policy.

See, according to Romney, America can only be great when we're playing the role of boorish global thug, treating the international community with disdain and practicing preemptive warfare instead of sound diplomacy.

"Never before in American history has its president gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined,” Romney writes. “There are anti-American fires burning all across the globe; President Obama’s words are like kindling to them."

The oddest thing about that statement is that Romney admits that America has had some misdeeds on the foreign policy scene. He just doesn't think that America should apologize for its mistakes. Ever.

Isn't that dangerous? Romney's leaving the door open to a 2012 Presidential run. But by all intensive purposes, he's beating a drum that would take the United States back to a day where it can do anything it wants to on the global scene, not have to be accountable for it, and certainly not have to say "I'm sorry" for messing up. Do folks really want someone who would be a de facto third term of George W. Bush?

Perhaps folks should take Romney's foreign policy advice with a huge grain of salt. After all, can you really trust his judgment on the issue, given that Romney also thinks that people who can see Russia from their house are qualified to be President? (That actually puts him in the minority on that question.)

The Democratic National Committee hit back hard on Romney, who has never had to make any foreign policy decision whatsoever, whether it was his tenure as Governor, Olympics chief, or venture capitalist.

"In the last election, the American people overwhelmingly rejected a radical foreign policy authored by Dick Cheney and wholeheartedly adopted by Mitt Romney that alienated our allies, emboldened our enemies, depleted our resources, distracted our focus and made the nation less secure," said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan, according to the Associated Press. "What's sorry is that Romney doesn't think that deserves an apology."

What's also scary is that Romney's rant also seems to indicate that Barack Obama has been soft on terror. Perhaps Romney should go back and look at the fact that under Obama, the "War on Terror" has been accelerated in ways the Bush administration might have only dreamed of. Check out the increased use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Check out the massive troop surge in Afghanistan. Check out the fact that Guantanamo remains open, that officials involved in torture get off Scot-free, and that secret detention centers are popping up in Afghanistan like Starbucks franchises on street corners.

Romney thinks this is soft? If so, that puts him to the right of the Bush administration.

Yikes. To the rest of the world, please accept our apology for Mitt Romney. Please know that his foreign policy positions and Evan Lysacek-hair don't speak for everyone.

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