The New York Times has a story on A-1 this morning regarding an
attack by the Taliban on a NATO base in Southern Afghanistan – an attack that damaged eight attack jets in what they describe as the "most single destructive single strike on Western materiel in the 11-year war."
Add that to the still continuing intense protests in various Middle Eastern nations against the U.S. and other western interests, and oh yeah, the continuing slaughter happening in Syria, and you realize that foreign policy is going to be a part of the remaining seven weeks of this presidential contest.
Some conservatives are going crazy in blasting the Obama administration, but then it doesn't take much to see them off. Now we're hearing revisionism regarding Libya, Egypt and how Obama should have dealt "better" with the Arab Spring (as if the American president could have that much control).
When I think about the incoherent rage against Obama, I always go back to Newt Gingrich, who a year and a half ago joined Republicans like Marco Rubio and John McCain in blasting the president for not intervening in Libya. A few weeks after the U.S. did join a NATO force in March of 2011, Gingrich then turned around and criticized Obama for invading Libya – I kid you not.
There's all this going on around the world, and we haven't even gotten to the Israeli-Iran situation. Yesterday Benjamin Netanyahu made appearances on Sunday morning American television, adding the "red zone" to his previously described "red line" , which he has grown angry about the U.S. not acknowledging in terms of when will the U.S. say Iran has gone too far in their nuclear build-up.
The presidential campaign returned to the Tampa Bay area over the weekend, with vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan in Dunedin, as CL's Michael Newberger reports.
And a report released last week by the Clean Water Fund the problems with coal ash in Florida.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2012.