Want to be nuked? Vote for Romney.

Yeah, a lot of you "Mittens" (or whatever y'all are calling yourself these days) aren't going to like this post.

Which is fine. I don't like Mitt Romney's plan to deal with Nuclear Deterrence. So that makes us even.

He trotted out a version of this approach at the speech he delivered earlier this year at the National Review shindig in Washington, DC.

In it's newer, more refined version, as described in the article I linked above, time has only served to make a bad idea worse.

Republican Mitt Romney would appoint an ambassador-at-large to prevent nuclear terror if elected president, arguing that avoiding a terrorist attack with unsecured nuclear weapons should take on heightened urgency in the United States.

The Republican candidate, in a speech planned for Thursday night at Yeshiva University in New York, says such a person would have the authority and resources to cross agency and departmental boundaries, ensuring nonproliferation strategies are coordinated at home and abroad.

I'm Mitt Romney. And I want to get tough on terrorists who might use Nukes. How tough?

Ambassador tough.

Does anyone really think this is a good idea? Why the hell do we need a new layer of bureaucracy to deal with this issue? What the hell do the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the nation's Intelligence Agencies do all day? Besides undermine President Bush, that is.

You know, if I was a rogue state, I'd be quaking at the notion of having to meet with an Ambassador confirmed by a "the war is lost" Defeatocratic Senate.

And when the Ambassador's diplomatic trip ended in failure, as it likely would, what next? Will "Give them Hell....or a Protocol Officer" Romney threaten to refer that rogue state to the Security Council to face an ultra-scary UN resolution?

Romney's position strikes me as an incredibly shallow dodge. It's the equivalent of appointing a commission to study an issue and then claiming that, by having done so, you've solved the problem. He knows that there is an issue with nuclear proliferation, that rogue states like Iran are actively seeking to develop a nuclear program, and that there exists the possibility that countries like Russia are seeing their stockpiles sold on the black market.

But he also knows that the one real deterrant available, consisting of an unlimited American response to a WMD attack or an aggressive, military preemption to prevent rogue states/terrorist organizarions from posing a threat to our interests (the Bush Doctrine, anyone?), sounds scary. Might turn off squeemish voters.

So let's give an extra layer of Diplomacy a try. After all, I doubt there will be turf battles which might erupt, or political attempts made to undermine the Ambassador's mission. Don't you?

After all, if Nancy Pelosi will go to Syria to negotiate her own foreign policy program against a sitting President's wishes, she would never think of frustrating an Ambassador's agenda, would she?

The fact of the matter is that America and Americans need not be bashful about asserting it's interests or protecting itself and it's citizenry from nuclear terrorism or nuclear blackmail. To the contrary, what we need is a Cheif Executive who can make the case forcefully and credibly that we will respond unflinchingly with an eye for an eye mentality.

No discussion. No games. No diplomatic niceties exchanged between gasbag Ambassadors. No sound and fury signifying nothing.

And Romney? It looks to me like he has seen a horrible, hypothetical future. And he has pre-emptively flinched.

Nice try Governor. Ask for my vote again after you've grown a spine.

posted by Jack M. at 11:39 PM

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