Huck’s Foreign Policy Flops
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who has previously joked about his total lack of foreign policy experience (“I may not be the expert as some people on foreign policy, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.), has offered up a scathing criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy and its conduct of the global war on terror in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine, released late Friday.
Huckabee’s essay makes clear that the former governor’s rhetorical stay at the Holiday Inn Express did nothing to enhance his knowledge of either American Foreign policy or domestic electoral politics. The fact is, it would be a splendid article if offered by either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama… which calls into question whether Huckabee really has any idea which party’s nomination he’s pursuing.
Here are a few samples of GOP candidate Huckabee’s thoughts on foreign policy and the US’ war on terror:
American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States’ main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists…
Pure leftwing drivel. And as General Petraeus’ “surge” strategy continues to show positive results, and more US troops are withdrawn from an improving Iraq, fewer and fewer Republicans are likely to view Huckabee’s comments kindly. A dumb mistake.
Although we cannot export democracy as if it were Coca-Cola or KFC, we can nurture moderate forces in places where al Qaeda is seeking to replace modern evil with medieval evil. Such moderation may not look or function like our system — it may be a benevolent oligarchy or more tribal than individualistic — but both for us and for the peoples of those countries, it will be better than the dictatorships they have now or the theocracy they would have under radical Islamists. The potential for such moderation to emerge is visible in the way that Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq have turned against al Qaeda to work with us; they could not stand the thought of living under such fundamentalism and brutality. The people of Afghanistan turned against the Taliban for the same reason. To know these extremists is not to love them.
Huckabee’s cute, homespun analogies aside, that these changes are happening in Afghanistan and Iraq is due to the very policies of Mr. Bush and that “bunker mentality” White House of Huckabee’s criticizing!
I would have met with (former Joint Chiefs Chairman, Army General Eric) Shinseki privately and carefully weighed his advice.
This last is just plain silly, assuming that President Bush did not meet with General Shinseki and did not take the general’s suggestions into account. Huckabee, of course, knows neither to be true.
In his article, Huckabee also thumped Bush for failing to pursue al-Qaida in Pakistan, noting recent terrorism plans, since thwarted, that were planned there,
Whereas our failure to tackle Iran seems to be leading inexorably to our attacking it, our failure to tackle al-Qaida in Pakistan seems to be leading inexorably to its attacking us again.
This is either the ranting of an ill-informed man to busy to read a newspaper, or the sly pandering of a man who ignores reality infavor of some partisan advantage. But that merely begs the question: Which party’s nomination is Huckabee running for?
Over at Powerline, Paul Mirengoff has this to say about Huckabee’s foreign policy analysis,
Huckabee again anthropomorphizes foreign policy. Previously, enemies like Iran have starred in the Huckabee foreign policy narrative as a misguided family member to whom we have petulantly refused to speak. Now the U.S. is portrayed as an immodest high school student who may be to blame for his own unpopularity. Put aside Huckabee’s flirtation with “blame American first” thinking; the superficiality with which he approaches world affairs is stunning.
Huckabee’s analogy of the U.S. to the arrogant school boy is not just sophomoric, it’s affirmatively inapt. Huckabee provides no evidence that the Bush administration has an “arrogant bunker mentality,” and his invocation of this phrase suggests that his foreign policy views have been formed more by watching CNN in airports, than by watching the Bush administration in action.
During his second term, President Bush has deferred to the Saudis and other Arab nations in formulating his policy towards Israel. He has deferred to the Europeans throughout both administrations with respect to the Iranian nuclear threat. Similarly, he has deferred throughout to China and other Asian powers when it comes to North Korea.
There are, of course, a few issues on which the U.S. did not defer. But the occasional desire to hold out for our own policies, based on our own perception of interests, does not amount to “a bunker mentality.” If the U.S. were to defer on every issue, we would effectively forfeit our sovereignty, something Huckabee says he doesn’t favor.
Clearly, Huckabee is trying to broaden his electoral appeal, building on his apparent late success with the evangelical wing of the GOP. But attacking a sitting GOP president by saying that he ought not to have done what he didn’t and that he ought to have done what he already has done, displays exactly the sort of muddled thinking and leadership by uninformed perception that we’ve come to expect from Democrats…not the sort of conservative Republican Mike Huckabee portrays himself to be.
That Holiday Inn Express Huckabee stayed at may be better suited to wannabe surgeons, helicopter pilots and rodeo clowns. Obviously it did nothing for this second rate, wannabe US president.
