Andrea Stone finds that plenty of Bush types aren't so happy with Republican candidates sounding more realist notes in their criticism of Obama's foreign policy:
"We will be in a stronger political position for a political outcome for this if we sustain relatively constant force levels through this fighting season and for at least the 2012 fighting season," said Michael Hayden, the former director of both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, at a policy briefing Thursday. "Give war a chance."
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said that despite rising anger among lawmakers over Pakistan's duplicity -- the latest outrage, its reported arrest of informants who helped make the successful raid on bin Laden's complex possible -- President Barack Obama should not high-tail it out of the region.
"To precipitously pull out of Afghanistan is not only to invite al Qaeda to go back in … but is to create a further worsening of the dynamic with Pakistan, which creates more instability," Chertoff said. "A premature withdrawal from Pakistan is fundamentally problematic for American national interests."
Likewise, Marc Thiessen is furious, and Danielle Pletka at AEI attacks Mitt Romney for saying we should be getting out of Afghanistan, saying “Romney has proven himself a little bit of a weathervane and I guess he senses that positioning himself in this place is good for his campaign — attempting to appease Ron Paul’s constituents without actually being Ron Paul.”
As Greg Scoblete points out, a shift "will occur when the bureaucrats and policy-makers that would staff a future Republican administration turn meaningfully from the doctrines and orthodoxies that have shaped "Republican" foreign policy in the past." They're not just "not turning away," they're literally freaking out about what likely amounts to mere pandering to a war weary American electorate.
