Foreign Policy Association: GailForce: A Man Has Got to Know His Limitations
By Truman Project Staff | 10.10.12
Truman Fellow Gail Harris appears in Foreign Policy Association:
I’m currently in Alabama helping out my 85-years-young mom so I haven’t had time to blog, but the following paragraph in a recent New York Times article caught my eye:
The United States military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there handle a flood of Syrian refugees, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons and be positioned should the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict.
This brings me to what I’d like to blog about today: Governor Romney’s foreign policy speech at Virginia Military Institute this week. The governor has come under a lot of criticism in this area. The critics seem to mostly focus on the governor’s lack of specifics for solving foreign policy issues. I may be wrong, but I think there are two reasons for this. First and most likely is that foreign policy is an area President Obama has had some notable success. It’s hard to attack the man who ordered the assault on Osama Bin Laden. The critics who say the president is taking too much credit are wrong. He could have ordered a drone or cruise missile strike or even dropping bombs on the compound. Instead he ordered the high risk option of sending in America’s best fighting force drum roll please: NAVY SEALS! Additionally, during his speech announcing Bin Laden’s death, the president gave credit to the intelligence community and the military. The bottom line, as Commander-in-Chief he had the responsibility and he made the decision to go forward with the operation.
