Progressive Opinion

salon.com — According to a highly reliable source, as Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare for the first presidential debate Wednesday night, top Republican operatives are primed to unleash a new two-pronged offensive that will attack Obama as weak on national security, and will be based, in part, on new intelligence information regarding the attacks in Libya that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens on September 11. The source, who has first-hand knowledge of private, high-level conversations in the Romney camp that took place in Washington, DC last week, said that at various times the GOP strategists referred to their new operation as the Jimmy Carter Strategy or the October Surprise. He added that they planned to release what they hoped would be “a bombshell” that would make Libya and Obama’s foreign policy a major issue in the campaign.

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tomdispatch.com — First came the hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.”  Then there was Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, grabbing headlines as he promoted “International Burn-a-Koran Day.”  Most recently, we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet with all the ensuing turmoil. Throughout, the official U.S. position has remained fixed: the United States government condemns Islamophobia.  Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace.  Incidents suggesting otherwise are the work of a tiny minority -- whackos, hatemongers, and publicity-seekers.  Among Muslims from Benghazi to Islamabad, the argument has proven to be a tough sell. And not without reason: although it might be comforting to dismiss anti-Islamic outbursts in the U.S. as the work of a few fanatics, the picture is actually far more complicated.  Those complications in turn help explain why religion, once considered a foreign policy asset, has in recent years become a net liability.

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consortiumnews.com — In the midst of a nationwide election campaign in which many politicians trumpet their support for the buildup and deployment of U.S. military power around the world, the American public’s disagreement with such measures is quite remarkable. Indeed, many signs point to the fact that most Americans want to avoid new wars, reduce military spending, and support international cooperation. The latest evidence along these lines is a nationwide opinion survey just released as a report (“Foreign Policy in the New Millennium”) by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Conducted in late May and early June 2012, the survey resulted in some striking findings. One is that most Americans are quite disillusioned with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past decade. Asked about these conflicts, 67 percent of respondents said they had not been worth fighting. Indeed, 69 percent said that, despite the war in Afghanistan, the United States was no safer from terrorism.

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tomdispatch.com — By now, Obama and his savvy campaign staff should really be home free, having run political circles around their Republican opponent as he was running circles around himself. There's only one problem: the world. These days it’s threatening to be a bizarrely uncooperative place for a president who wants to rest on his Osama-killing foreign-policy laurels. So send Mitt to the Cayman Islands, stick Paul Ryan in a Swiss bank account, and focus your attention instead on Obama versus the world. For the next 43 days, that's the real contest. In such a potentially tumultuous situation, the president and his people are committed to a perilous high-wire act without a net. It involves bringing to bear all the power and savvy left to the last superpower on Earth to prevent some part of the world from spinning embarrassingly out of control, lest the president’s opponent be handed a delectable “October surprise.”

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prospect.org — Take a breath and think carefully. Was Mitt Romney's candid-camera comment on how he'd handle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really as awful as it sounds at first? Actually, yes. In fact, it's even worse, especially if you are listening to it in Israel, or the Palestinian territories, or anywhere else in the Middle East. The man who would be president of the United States has said that he would throw the entire region under the bus.

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salon.com — The glee from Democrats, frustration from Republicans, and amazement from commentators has been easy to detect as the extent of President Obama’s advantage on foreign policy and national security has become clear. There is obvious volatility to the unfolding events in the Middle East, and the possibility exists that developments in the coming days might somehow prompt voters to reconsider Obama’s leadership. But for now, Mitt Romney is gaining no traction from his effort to portray the unrest as an indictment of American policy under Obama –and may actually be hurting himself. The spectacle of a Republican White House nominee straining – and failing – to score political points on national security is understandably jarring to anyone who’s watched U.S. politics for the last decade.

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tnr.com — In 1960, when Albert Shanker and other members of New York City’s teachers union sought collective bargaining rights, they set a strike date for Monday November 7, the day prior to the presidential election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The timing would provide maximum leverage, they reasoned, because the Democratic mayor, Robert Wagner, would not want to come down hard on striking teachers the day before the election. This strategy was vindicated when teachers won an agreement that led to bargaining rights after just a single day on strike. The same logic surely crossed the mind of the shrewd president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, who knew that calling a strike this week would be highly disruptive to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. But if the strike has been bad for Democratic presidential politics, it may ultimately be good for Democratic education policy, which for too long has aped right-wing rhetoric in the name of education reform.

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thedailybeast.com — Tuesday’s dramatic attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that left four American diplomats dead was a big surprise to many, but not to me. Coming on the heels of the anniversary of 9/11 and continued public outcries in Egypt and Libya over an “insulting” U.S.-produced movie about the Prophet Muhammad led many in the Arab world to brace themselves for escalating violence as well as the inevitable rehashing of the “Why do they hate us?” debate. I am also sure that almost no one will focus on why the masses in Egypt and Libya, two countries of the Arab Spring that have recently gained greater freedoms, continue to have negative views toward America. The question then is, why do these societies continue to hate the U.S., even when so many on the streets share our values and are becoming freer and more empowered as a result? I am afraid the answer is still the same.

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takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com — Stung by the furious response to Mitt Romney’s attack on President Obama over the killings in Libya, some right-wing commentators have defended Mr. Romney’s right to challenge Mr. Obama on foreign policy. Just for instance, Jennifer Rubin wrote in The Washington Post that “Obama has no right to insist he is beyond criticism.” She added: “If [the media] are going to insist that holding a president accountable for his national security is out of bounds, then perhaps journalism is now farce.” Of course Mr. Obama is not beyond criticism. Of course Mr. Romney has the right to hold the president accountable for his national security. But this story isn’t about that. It’s about the fact that he made something up. He accused the Obama administration of sympathizing with those who waged the attacks, when it did no such thing.

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consortiumnews.com — Some moments show you when a candidate is ready or not to become President of the United States. I suspect last night will become one of those moments for Mitt Romney. The verdict will not be positive. Politics is hardball. Everything is, in some sense, fair. But campaigns are also a prism into the judgment and steadiness under pressure of a person who would be president. This was amateur hour for the opposition campaign last night, reminiscent of John McCain’s rash call four years ago to cancel the presidential debates and the campaign itself to deal with the unfolding economic crisis. There was nothing ignoble or dishonorable about McCain’s suggestion. It just showed a certain rashness that was widely viewed as unpresidential. Romney’s moment was quite different — rash and shameful. Not worthy of a president. Crass, undignified and troubling on many levels.

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