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Romney Adviser: If Mitt Were President, ISIS Would Not Exist
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 12:35 PM
By: Sandy Fitzgerald
Mitt Romney's advisers are saying that there are several reasons that it would be a good idea for him to launch a third try for the White House, including claims that if the former Massachusetts governor had won in 2012, neither the Islamic State or Russian President Vladimir Putin would be causing the United States problems.
"There wouldn't be an ISIS at all, and Putin would know his place in life," one of Romney's longtime advisers told The Boston Globe this week. "Domestically, things would be in better shape."
Romney has criticized Obama for withdrawing forces too fast from Iraq, telling Fox News in November that "as a result of the mistakes that have been made in the past on the president's part, we now have terrible visions being shown on TV and of course, the threat to ourselves here in the homeland."
Critics ridiculed Romney in 2012 for calling Russia the United States' chief foe, but a year later, when Putin began making his moves that eventually escalated into military action in Ukraine, Romney's supporters said he was right in that assessment.
Advisers' claiming matters would be different under a Romney presidency echo claims that were made during the 2012 campaign, reports The Huffington Post.
Days after the Benghazi, Libya, attacks in 2012, one of Romney's top aides said that the attack, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and several embassy staff members were killed, would not have happened under Romney's watch.
"There's a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you'd be in a different situation," the aide, Richard Williamson, said in an interview with The Washington Post at the time. "For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we've had an American ambassador assassinated."
The Huffington Post says the Islamic State actually traces its origins back to 2006, when it was part of al Qaida in Iraq. It eventually came back in 2011 and its power grew in Syria after it merged with the al-Nusra Front, and has continued to grow as a force in the Middle East since that time.
The thought behind the statement, writes The New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal in an op-ed piece Wednesday, is Romney would have kept troops in Iraq for longer, while arming "moderates" in Syria.
"This is armchair-hawkism taken to the extreme," said Rosenthal. "Romney had no more idea who the 'moderates' were in Syria than Mr. Obama and his team did. I'm not sure any such thing existed, or exists now."
Further, he questions how Romney would have armed the Free Syria Army and others.
"Crating up anti-aircraft rockets and high-powered guns and sending them via FedEx?" said Rosenthal. "Or would he have gone through the same Middle Eastern 'allies' who have been funneling weapons to the Islamic State all this time?"
