Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Republican Foreign Policy Debate: All of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives


Tonight’s debate was brought to you by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and Satan. Some of the questions came from Ed Meese, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Addington, a reminder that as bumbling, inept, proudly ignorant, and tongue-tied as this bunch of candidates might be, their party has behind them a talent pool of some of the most evil bastards in the world ready to staff their administration.

Transcript.

“I’m Wolf Blitzer and yes, that’s my real name.”

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE?: Ron Paul’s opening statement: “I am convinced that needless and unnecessary wars are a great detriment.”

WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE, WILLARD? Romney: “I’m Mitt Romney and yes, Wolf, that’s also my first name.”


AN HONEST UNDERSTANDING: Gingrich wants to extend the Patriot Act forever, and strengthen it, “building an honest understanding that all of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives.”

Ron Paul responds, “you never have to give up liberty for security,” and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike.

WHAT WE HAVE TO REALIZE: Bachmann: “We have to realize we’re in a very different war”. She repeats her line from two debates ago about Obama “hand[ing] over our interrogation of terrorists to the ACLU. He has outsourced it to them. Our CIA has no ability to have any form of interrogation for terrorists.” Because it doesn’t count as interrogation if there’s no waterboarding.

SOMEONE WE’LL LOOK AT: Perry wants to privatize the TSA and eliminate unions. Ditto Santorum, who also wants to profile Muslims, especially young male Muslims. “I think Muslims will be someone we’ll look at.” Cain wants “targeted identification.” “If you take a look at the people who are trying to kill us it would be easy to figure out.” Because they look all terroristy, if you know what I mean. About 30 seconds later he calls Blitzer “Blitz.” So much for targeted identification.

WITH THEIR PARTIES AND THEIR LOUD MUSIC, I’M GUESSING: Huntsman says Pakistan is “the country that ought to keep everybody up at night.” He calls Pakistan “a haven for bad behavior.”


Bachmann, who does not know what the word epicenter means, calls Pakistan “the epicenter of dealing with terrorism.” So which is it, a haven or an epicenter? She says the possibility of Al Qaida getting Pakistani nukes “is more than an existential threat. We have to take this very seriously.” She doesn’t know what the word existential means either. She says Pakistan is “kind of like too nuclear to fail.” Perry says he would cut off all aid and send Pakistan to its room until it proves it can be trusted, and then Bachmann calls him naive, so yeah, that happened.

Perry thinks the answer is to get Afghanistan, India and Pakistan into a free-trade zone, which would get “Pakistan to understand that they have to work with all of the countries in that region.”

HEY, MITT, DON’T LET THE PITH HELMET MESS UP YOUR HAIR: “We need to bring Pakistan into the 21st century, or the 20th century for that matter,” just like “what happened in Indonesia back in the 1960s, where -- where we helped Indonesia move toward modernity with new leadership.” And gave them names of people to be killed as part of the genocidal slaughter of a million people. You know, modernity.

Romney says “This is not time for America to cut and run” from Afghanistan. I’m sure he’ll tell us when it is time for America to cut and run.

Gingrich stopped in the middle of talking about killing bin Laden to ask whether he had 30 seconds or longer to give his answer, because “I’m happy to play by the rules, I just want to know what they are.” Which I thought was amusing because he meant play by the rules as far as answering within a given time-frame, not play by the rules against sending troops into a country secretly to kill people. He says Pakistan was furious with us about that, but we should have been furious at them, because Gingrich likes pretending to be furious about things.


Some Heritage Foundation douche asks if we should help Israel attack Iran.

MOUNTAINOUS: Herman Cain reminds us that “when you talk about attacking Iran, it is a very mountainous region.” But “in some instances, depending upon how strong the plan is, we would join with Israel for that, if it was clear what the mission was and it was clear what the definition of victory was.”
victory >noun (pl. victories) an act of defeating an opponent in a battle or competition.
-ORIGIN Latin victoria.
Hope that helps.

Ron Paul says he wouldn’t, because Israel has several hundred nuclear missiles and “they can take care of themselves,” if by take care of themselves you mean turn the Middle East into a radioactive hellscape.

Herman Cain again wants to remind us that Iran is very mountainous. He does not like heights. Hell, he won’t even sexually harass tall women.

It’s like he learns one new fact for each debate, and this one was that Iran is mountainous.

SERIOUS: Perry wants to sanction the Iranian Central Bank and put a no-fly zone over Syria. “And in that moment, they will understand that America is serious.” But then they’d realize it was “President Perry” ordering these things, and understand that America is not serious.

Blitz, as he will no doubt forever henceforth be known, asks if cutting off all Iranian oil wouldn’t wreck the European economy. Gingrich says that his energy program would actually produce an energy surplus in the United States, which would evidently be large enough to “literally replace the Iranian oil.” So the US would suddenly become a huge net exporter of energy with what, dilithium crystals?

The Newtster goes on: “But if we were serious, we could break the Iranian regime, I think, within a year, starting candidly with cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran, and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have.”


Bachmann says that Obama “met with [Iran] with no preconditions. It’s the doctrine of appeasement.” When did that happen?

Santorum says he supported AIDS assistance to Africa because “Africa was a country on the brink.” Santorum says that “America is that shining city on the hill.” No word from Cain on whether the “country” of Africa is mountainous, but the “city” of America definitely sounds mountainous.

Blitz keeps having to repeat the questions for Cain.

Ron Paul says “the [foreign] aid is all worthless.”

Romney thinks a trillion dollars is being taken out of the defense budget and put into Obamacare. Paul says nonsense, and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike.

Romney says “The right course in America is to stand up to Iran with crippling sanctions” – if I were a psychoanalyst, I’d have hours of fun analyzing Twitt’s notion of “standing up” to someone by “crippling” them. And we should indict Ahmadinejad for violating the Genocide Convention, because why not.

OR MAYBE A NICE CARD: And once he’s president, “my first trip -- my first foreign trip will be to Israel to show the world we care about that country and that region.”

Gingrich says “if we were a serious country,” “we would open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of oil worldwide would collapse.” Collapse? If we had that as much oil under our feet as he seems to think, well, nobody better light a match. Also, “Lean Six Sigma,” which sounds like the name of one of his crappy novels.

Gingrich says he would bomb Iranian nuclear facilities “only as a last recourse and only as a step toward replacing the regime.” Bombing our way to a friendly regime in Iran, because what could go wrong.


Rick Perry says the supercommittee failed – “it was a super-failure” – because Rick Perry is hilarious. And if Leon Panetta is an honorable man, he will resign to protest the sequestrations. So obviously that will happen, because Little Leon wouldn’t want Rick Perry to think he wasn’t an honorable man.

WHAT HER VOICE(S) SAID: Bachmann: “Let me answer that in the context of the super committee, because I was involved in the middle of that fight as a member of Congress this summer. And my voice said this. I said it’s time for us to draw a line in the sand.”

I KNEW JIMMY MONROE; JIMMY MONROE WAS A FRIEND OF MINE; AND YOU, SIR... Rick Perry: “I think it’s time for a 21st century Monroe Doctrine.” Evidently “We know that Hamas and Hezbollah are working in Mexico, as well as Iran, with their ploy to come into the United States.”

Ron Paul calls for an end to the war on drugs, and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike. He says we should eliminate the entire welfare state, which is just an incentive for illegal immigrants to bring their families.

Gingrich calls for a “humane” immigration policy, with “something like a World War II Selective Service Board that, frankly, reviews the people who are here.” He’d consider letting people who’ve been here 25 years and have grandchildren and are in a local church (he mentioned that twice) stay. “[A]s somebody who believes strongly in family” – why, I’ve had several! – “you’ll have a hard time explaining why that particular subset is being broken up and forced to leave”.

Bachmann, selectively listening to Gingrich, or just not understanding, keeps saying he wants amnesty for 11 million people and a federal DREAM Act. “We need to move away from magnets, not offer more.” Magnets, as we know, scare our Michele, for some reason.


Next up is Romney, who doesn’t like magnets either, because they might get too close to his robotic CPU; he wants to “turn... off the magnets of amnesty”.

Perry is also anti-magnet (they mess his hair up somehow? I got nothin’.)

Romney says “The answer is we’re going to have a system that gives people who come legally a card that identifies them as coming here legally.” Hey, I know, we could make that card yellow, no wait, green, yeah green. “Employers are going to be expected to inspect that card, see if they’re here legally.”

The Blitz helpfully prefaces a question: “Herman Cain, you may not know this, but today Governor Perry called for a no-fly zone, for the U.S. to participate in a no-fly zone over Syria.” He actually did that in this very debate, but yeah, Herman Cain probably doesn’t know this.

You know, I could analyze what Cain and Perry said about Syria, but why?

Oh wait, somewhere in the middle of his answer, Perry started talking about how Syria and Iran are linked, so a no-fly zone over Syria is one of the ways we stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Asked about the Arab Spring, Huntsman is talking about the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Paul notes that a no-fly zone would be an act of war. “I would say why don’t we mind our own business?” He is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike.

Romney, perhaps after exposure to a magnet, started gibbering: “President Obama’s foreign policy is one of saying, first of all, America’s just another nation with a flag. I believe America is an exceptional and unique nation. President Obama feels that we’re going to be a nation which has multipolar balancing militaries. I believe that American military superiority is the right course. President Obama says that we have people throughout the world with common interests. I just don’t agree with him. I think there are people in the world that want to oppress other people, that are evil. President Obama seems to think that we’re going to have a global century, an Asian century. I believe we have to have an American century, where America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.” He does, however, point out that a no-fly zone in Syria is silly because there’s no bombing.

Someone asks what security issue they’re worried about that nobody has asked them about. Santorum says “militant socialists” in Central and South America “bonding together” with radical Islamists. Paul worries about overreaction and getting into more unnecessary wars, and is immediately pepper-sprayed by Lt. Pike. Perry worries about Communist China which “is destined for the ash heap of history because they are not a country of virtues,” with the forced abortions and cybersecurity. Romney says Hezbollah in Latin America. Cain says cyber attacks. Gingrich says WMD attacks on an American city, electromagnetic pulse attacks, and cyber attacks. Bachmann says Al-Shabaab in Minnesota. Huntsman says the American economy and the trust deficit.

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