Oct. 22 - Debate on Egypt

In the October 22, 2012 debate moderator Bob Schieffer asked if the President had any regrets saying Mubarak should go when some in his administration thought we should wait. Obama said – no, I think America has to stand with democracy, the notion that there were tanks running over young people that is not the type of American leadership that Kennedy talked about 50 years ago; they have a democratically elected government now and it’s their responsibility to make sure they protect religious minorities and women-who should be educated and we’ve put significant pressure on them to do that; they have to abide by the treaty with Israel and work with us when it comes to counter-terrorism; we’ll help them with their economy because it’s important to them and the world that their young people see opportunities-their aspirations are similar to those of the young people here; we’ve been working with Egyptian entrepreneurs to show them how to rebuild their economy without corruption and being transparent but for us to be successful there are things we have to do here; we’ve done some experimenting in nation building in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan but we’ve neglected our economy, energy, and education and it’s hard for us to project leadership around the world when we’re not doing it here. Romney said – he supported Obama’s action in Egypt but wished we had a better look at the future; he said looking at the beginning of the President’s term he wished we had seen what was coming so it didn’t explode in the way it did. He stepped back and said our purpose is to make the world more peaceful so people have better lives; we didn’t ask for the mantle of world peace but we have it - for us to be able to promote the principles of peace requires us to be strong and that requires our economy to be strong; when the President of Iran comes out and says our debt makes us not a great country – that’s a frightening thing and the former Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mullen said our debt is the biggest national security threat that we face; we’ve weakened our economy and we need to have a strong military; it’s second to none in the world but the idea of $1 trillion in cuts to the military would change that; we need to have allies – we have 42 around the world and we have to stand by our principles; if we’re strong in each of those things America’s influence will grow, fortunately nowhere in the world is America’s influence greater than it was 4 years ago. Scheiffer tried to stop Romney but he went on with – and that’s because we’ve become weaker on those dimensions. Scheiffer told the President that he’d be able to respond later because that went into the next segment.        

In regard to Romney’s single comment on Egypt – the President acted sooner than some thought we should but he wants a crystal ball to look into the future. I found it disturbing that Romney finds the negative words of an unfriendly – frightening; his Mullen quote was from 2010 when we already had a large debt left by Bush. FYI - forces in Afghanistan consisted of troops from 57 countries and as of May 2012 the troops from the US and 50 countries remain.