Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has arisen from the ashes again to attack President Obama, this time in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he manages to blame Obama and Hillary Clinton for the situation in Ukraine and other foreign policy issues.
Romney, who was thoroughly trounced in the 2012 election partly because of a series of foreign policy gaffes, joined a chorus of other conservatives who have pointed a finger at Obama for letting Putin get away with annexing a country that used to be a part of Russia, as if he could have changed the course of events in Ukraine if he had walked with more of a Putin-like swagger.
Romney wrote that the fact that there are “no good options” for the U.S. everywhere “from Crimea to North Korea, from Syria to Egypt, and from Iraq to Afghanistan” is due to negligence on Obama’s part — leaving us only to “wring our hands.”
“A large part of the answer is our leader’s terrible timing. In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices and good options,” Romney wrote. “There was a juncture when America had the potential to influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options.”
Romney even issued a warning to current Secretary of State John Kerry.
“President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe,” Romney said. “Their failure has been painfully evident: It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed. A chastened president and Secretary of State Kerry, a year into his job, can yet succeed, and for the country’s sake, must succeed. Timing is of the essence.”
Clearly the inclusion of Clinton was designed to take pre-emptive shots at the frontrunner for the 2016 presidential elections.
In Ukraine, Romney said Obama should have acted sooner.
“When protests in Ukraine grew and violence ensued, it was surely evident to people in the intelligence community — and to the White House — that President Putin might try to take advantage of the situation to capture Crimea, or more,” he wrote. “That was the time to talk with our global allies about punishments and sanctions, to secure their solidarity, and to communicate these to the Russian president.”“
In response to Romney’s editorial, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said on Twitter, “Lots of blaming America for the world’s problems. Zero ideas for how to solve them. Typical.”
White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer responded to Vietor’s tweet: “Safe to assume this isn’t a 2 part piece where all the solutions come next?”
When journalist Mark Halperin said perhaps Romney was saying there were solutions previously, and that Obama needed better timing, Pfeiffer tweeted: “Interesting choice to go the entire 2012 campaign without laying ANY of them out. This op ed is as vacuous as the 12 platform.”
