I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the real winner of the foreign policy debate was Ayman al-Zawahiri. Neither candidate showed the slightest grasp of al Qaeda’s strategic vision. Both tried to portray the loss of North Africa to the Muslim Brotherhood, or worse hard-core Salafists aligned with al Qaeda, as a triumph of democracy. Both propose to actively support the extension of that disaster to Syria.
Obviously electing Romney is necessary to save the Republic on the domestic front, but we’d better hope he has the circumspection to realize that foreign policy is his weak suit, and that he picks advisors who actually understand Islam, rather than relying on the politically correct types from Foggy Bottom. Shedding his slavophobia might also be helpful — I know it doesn’t look it now with Putin mistakenly thinking he can use Iran as a pawn in a game of balance-of-power with the U.S., but in the long run Russian interests and American interests coincide both against Islam and against China.