Thanks! I didn't hear the speech but will watch it later on C-Span.
My view is that while Assad may be a devil, he is the devil we know. As bad as he may be, he does try to take some care of women, ethnic and religious minorities. Yes, he is receiving support from the Iranians but given the loss of Egypt as an American friend, might there be an opportunity here to take a pragmatic approach of putting the past in the past and winning Assad over from the Iranians and Russians? Carter for all his flaws did it with Sadat and that worked out fairly well until hussein came along.
Assad has rivers, oceans of blood on his hands now. I think Romney believes a line has been crossed in Syria. The whole world has seen Assad’s henchmen military attack whole neighborhoods of citizens where he believes some of his opponents are, and wipe out everyone there and destroy the buildings, infrastructure, etc. The days of ever being able to help keep Assad in power such as we did Mubarak in Egypt, if only Assad would sway our way instead of Iran’s, are over I think Romney believes. I think he’s right. We can’t go back and unring the bell.
But right now the situation there is an unholy mess, a disaster, a catastrophe. There ARE apparently some Assad opponents who have more decent intentions than either Assad or al qaeda (who, just like they have in Libya are flowing in there). And don’t forget the Muslim Brotherhood has already taken complete control of Egypt and his been in consultations with Iran to form an alliance. And Iran is about to get nuclear weapons and wants to exterminate Israel.
It’s building up to something incomprehensibly horrible, looks like, even by ME standards.
You were hoping Romney didn’t express wholehearted support to the anti-Assad movement. From my hearing, he didn’t. He expressed qualified support for an element that is way better than the other two power elements there, Assad the Iranian puppet bloody tyrant vs. al qaeda.