Next Up--Saturday's Prime-Time Foreign Policy Debate

The latest poll has Herman Cain still in the lead with 18% of the vote, Mitt Romney with 15% and Newt Gingrich and his lovely bride Callista just behind with 15%. Rick Perry has tanked. So we now have a serial groper, a serial flip-flopper and a serial adulterer as the leading Repubican candidates. Tomorrow they debate about who can really be commander-in-chief.

Mitt Romney set the stage with his Wall Street Journal op-ed declaring that Obama had shredded all his credibility for his lack of a forceful policy on Iran and has engaged in a policy that is shamefully amoral. Mitt, who is surrounded by the remnants of the 1990s organization "The Next American Future", openly advocates war with Iran.

Now step back a moment. First, a political candidate only days after the IAEA report on Iran's nuclear weapons program launches a personal attack on the United States almost mirroring the same rhetoric as the leaders of the Iranian regime. Secondly, he jumps the shark by immediately going to a military option. Policy 101 demands that the military option is always the last option. All others must be exhausted first. Unfortunately, those options are being exhausted and we may indeed have some military action with Iran. By why is the default mode for Republicans over the last 12 years been war.

On Veterans Day, we should understand that veterans can take immense pride in their service, their accomplishments and the relationships they have and had with their brothers and sisters in arms. But it is the rare veteran who looks fondly back on war itself. Growing up, my father would tell humorous stories of being stationed in North Africa and Italy during World War II but was very reluctant to actually talk about the fighting. Very late in his life he talked about how horrible it was and the gratuitous violence against civilians. None of his friends ever talked about the Pacific Theater where they fought, several of them valiantly, because it was hellish and several suffered from maladies the rest of their lives. And those were Vets of the Good War. Recent Iraq veterans I have met complain of constant health problems that were generated by the dust and heat over in Baghdad and they are the healthy ones.

So, before we beat our chest and pretend to be macho men it is useful to be a bit humble and understand that war is a recognition of political failure and its consequences are truly horrible.

In my opinion, President Obama has actually enhanced national security and made the country and the world a safer place. In little over two and a half years in office, he has a sigificant number of foreign policy achievements which are little remarked on because our entire natinal debate is on the economy. Some of these achievements are criticized by his own supporters but few are praised by the Republicans.

To that end www.thinkprogress.org published today a list of Obama's Foreign Policy Successes just so people won't forget when they hear the shopworn lines in tomorrow's debate. Even Think Progress misses a few and omits a couple that have met opposition by progressives.

1. I think we have to give credit to the Obama Administration for taking out the Somali pirates with the Navy Seals and rescuing the American ship held hostage. This set the stage for his other successes against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

2. Killing Osama Bin Laden and his campaign against Al Qaeda. He promised during his 2008 campaign he would get the man behind the 9/11 plot and he did. Immediately after taking office, he ordered then CIA director Leon Panetta to " redouble" efforts to track al-Qaeda's leader down. About two and a half years later, he ordered the raid against bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, killing him and recovering a treasure trove of intelligence on the terror network. During President Obama's time in office, Al Qaeda has suffered its great losses since the U.S. evicted them from Afghanistan in 2001.

3. A subset of this has been the disruption of several terrorist plots against the United States--the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, the anniversary 9/11 plot to blow up the New York subways, and the latest Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States.

4. The Obama Administration killed senior Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al Awlaki in Yemen , along with other leaders of the Arabian peninsula's branch of the group.

5. Through intense diplomacy, the Obama Administration facilitated the creation of South Sudan as an independent country.

6. He supported the Democratic Transition in Egypt by consistently calling on Egyptian authorities to respect the rights of the demonstrators against the Mubarak regime and helped negotiate a non-violent end to his decades old rule. The administration also worked with its Egyptian counterparts to set out the steps for an orderly transiton of power and praised the military for its restraint. At the same time, the Obama administration got the Egyptian authorities to commit themselves to all regional and international obligations and treaties, with a special emphasis on their peace treaties with Israel. This November and January we will see parliamentary elections and later in the Spring presidential elections.

7. Widely criticized for his actions on Libya, the Obama Administration pulled together an international coalition to approve and successfully executive a no-fly zone over Libya to protect Libyan citizens and the anti-Qaddafi rebels. It took seven months, only $1 billion and the coalition forces helped the rebels overthrow the Qaddafi regime on October 20.

8.Early in his presidency , President Obama promised that the United States armed forces would end combat missions by late summer 2010. It happened on August 31,2010. Following Iraq's refusal to support an extension of immunity for U.S. military personnel, President Obama promised that all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by the end of this year.

9. Little commented on has been President Obama's efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He held the first ever global conference on the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the United States and achieved several bilateral commitments of countries to have the United States obtain their enriched uranium and plutonium. The administration has been active on this and , for example, received custody of all of Kazakhstan's plutonium. The centerpiece of this effort was the New Strategic Arms Reduction treaty (START) with Russia , which halved the number of Russian and American nuclear missile launchers. The Obama administration also adopted a new defense doctrine declaring that the U.S. will not use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons aggainst non-nuclear states that are party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

10. Contrary to his Republican critics, the Obama administration worked to tighten and enforce sanctions against Iran and got the UN Security Council to pass another round of multilateral sanctions on June 9,2010. The President also signed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA). The Obama administration has also continued the covert actions to sabotage the nuclear program, which did slow down the program. The efforts by the Obama Administration have isolated Tehran internationally. With his relations with Moscow and Beijing he persuaded both Russia and China not to veto further sanctions on Iran. The Administration also quietly provided assistance to the Green Revolution.

11. I know it is heresy to say it--President Obama actually strengthened U.S.-Israel ties. In an interview in August, Israeli Defense Minister ehud Barak said, "I can hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around the world than we have right now. Another official said that coordination was now "better than under President Bush." While there remains tension over the settlement issue, U.S. military aid to Israel has increased markedly and the coordination regarding Iran has actually increased markedly. President Obama approved the transfer of a missile defense system to Israel and also our bunker buster bombs, something the George W. Bush administration refused to do for fears the plans would end up in the hands of the Chinese.

12. While not in the Think Progress report, I would include the three Fair Trade Agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. In particular, Republican critics of President Obama's trip to South Korea and their declaration that he had failed is contradicted by his successful negotiation of the trade agreement, which has been suppported by the major American unions.

13. I don't know whether I agree with Think Progress that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell falls within the foreign policy achievements. But the cost of enforcing it and the cloud it put over the gay and lesbian service people is ended and ended rather peacefully.

14. I would include the rapid response by USAID to the Haitian earthquake as an achievement even though massive problems still exist there. But it was precisely the type of actions Americans are known for.

These are not minor. If he packed up his bag tomorrow, this would be quite a record.

At the debate tomorrow, you will hear that President Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism, he leads from behind, we basically don't need allies, except Israel, which Obama threw under the bus, and that Obama has made the country less safe. Our great troops nailed bin Laden while Obama was playing golf so he would have plasuible denial if the operation failed. The New Start Treaty prevents the United States from building an anti-missle defense system. He threw Muburak under the bus. He is cowardly about Iran. And he is not tough enough on China. And depending on the candidate the French and Italians defeated Gaddafi and now Al Qaeda will take over in Libya and Tunisia.

Theodore Roosevelt said "Walk softly and carry a big stick." Today's Republicans have some distorted view of the Alpha Male or some psychosexual issue making them act like bullies, war mongerers and just nasty folks. I've told my remaining Republican friends, who work on security and foreign policy issues, if one of these candidates, including Willard, get elected, just turn off the lights. The world will not listen to us anymore.

Almost all the Republican candidates with the exception of Jon Huntsman, are unilateralists or isolationists, which I argue in a previous post come from the same source. They and their Republican House colleagues are against foreign aid and any notion of soft power. They do not believe in multilateral organizations as witnessed by their defunding the Organization of American States, Unesco and threats against the U.N. Willard Romney actually suggested that he would make foreign assistance contingent on a country's support of our foreign policy--since, of course, they don't have their own national interests. But then again Romney also said that China should take the lead in humanitarian aid, which would weaken America's standing in the world.

The audience to watch tomorrow are the foreigners. Reactions from abroad on the debates should be fascinating as most of the world stands appalled at the noise coming from the Republicans. And who will the audience boo tomorrow?

Can the Republicans actually make their accusations against Obama stick? An old foreign policy hand wants said to me that everyone in the United States who knew anything about foreign policy couold fit into a small--he stressed small-football stadium. So yes, they can. They have been outfront criticizing the President at every step of the way. When you can't not credit the man with getting archvillain number 1--Bin laden-- then everything is game.