Heard one of the "we'll tell you what you heard meant" tv people say that Ryan held his own on
foreign affairs subjects - specifically Afghanistan. About threw up when I heard this. Robert Dryfuss from The Nation says it much better than I ever could:
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Listen to Biden:
[W]e are leaving. We are leaving in 2014. Period. And in the process, we’re going to be saving over the next 10 years another $800 billion. We’ve been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed. Now, all we’re doing is putting the Kabul government in a position to be able to maintain their own security. It’s their responsibility, not America’s.
snip
Ryan, on the other hand, was all over the place. He said he’ll listen to the generals and give them what they want, he said he’s “skeptical” about talking with the Taliban (Romney, of course, is flatly against negotiations with the Taliban), and he seemed to support the idea of making the withdrawal of US and NATO forces contingent on “conditions” on the ground. He said:
What we don’t want to do is lose the gains we’ve gotten. Now, we’ve disagreed from time to time on a few issues. We would have more likely taken into accounts the recommendations from our commanders, General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, on troop levels throughout this year’s fighting season. We’ve been skeptical about negotiations with the Taliban, especially while they’re shooting at us.
But we want to see the 2014 transition be successful, and that means we want to make sure our commanders have what they need to make sure that it is successful so that this does not once again become a launching pad for terrorists.
snip
And then there was this odd exchange with the moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News:
RADDATZ: Mr. Ryan, I want to ask you about—the Romney campaign talks a lot about no apologies. He has a book called “No Apologies.” Should the US have apologized for Americans burning Korans in Afghanistan? Should the US apologize for US Marines urinating on Taliban corpses?
RYAN: Oh, gosh, yes. Urinating on Taliban corpses? What we should not apologize for…
RADDATZ: Burning Korans, immediately?
RYAN: What—what we should not be apologizing for are standing up for our values.
So Ryan is willing apologize for things like US forces urinating on Afghan corpses—though he finessed the Koran question, no doubt to pander to his Islamophobic, Christian-right base. But who, exactly, is apologizing for “standing up for our values”? Did Obama say: “World, I’m so sorry that we stand for truth, justice and the American way”? Umm, no. Sadly, Raddatz didn’t press Ryan on that.
http://www.thenation.com/node/170537#
