Romney’s Thoughtful Approach to the War on Terror

Check out this personable, insightful radio interview of Mitt Romney by Ed Morrissey. Well worth the fourteen minutes it takes. Turn up your sound, open the page, look to top right, pull the radio bar rightward to 37:30 and listen. Romney demonstrates a thoughtful, measured approach to foreign policy, especially the war on terror and global jihad. It’s a refreshing contrast to one opponent’s habit of stating over and over that several decades ago he was a top-gun on the bridge of the USS Whatever and he “understands these things.”

Here’s a partial transcript:

Ed M: Now, regarding global Jihad, are you in favor of pursuing the same type of forward of strategy as the Bush administration has used? I’m not necessarily speaking about Iraq, but in terms of making sure that Americans forces are deployed in areas where the Jihadis have to address America through its military rather than attacking its civilians. That’s been sort of a concept that the Bush Administration has been trying to use since 2001. Do you plan to use a similar strategy or do you plan to adjust this in a different direction?

Gov R: Well, we face a wide array of nations that are under the threat of global Jihadist, and some like the Philippines or Indonesia the threat is of a very different nature of that, which is being experienced in a place like Iraq and so our involvement and the nature of our involvement is going to be different. So let me describe the kind of options we have. First, I would bring together other nations along with ourselves to make sure collectively that we are fighting global Jihad and that we are fighting it with our military as well as our non-military resources. In terms of our military force, in some cases it will require the kind of actions that you see in a place like Afghanistan, a full military attack. In others, a different kind of military effort would be called for. As an example, in the Philippines, an Army Special Forces team was able to help those people reject an offshoot of Al Qaeda. This was not, you know, men with rifles and tanks but instead a Special Forces unit that helped build bridges, build water projects, move the civilian population to support the Filipino government and democracy and ultimately that has virtually eliminated the threat of global Jihad there. And I have called for what I have described as a special partnership force; meaning the creation of small units of intelligence plus army special forces personnel which are able to drawn into a nation which ask for help, to support that nation in its effort to reject the violent and the extreme. In many cases, the Muslim nation itself will be able to do the best job in eliminating the threat of radical Jihad and we can support that effort through a special partnership force of the type I have described.