This is driving me nuts!

I want to follow up to my response below... I've been walking around all day and no matter what I do or how I attempt to distract myself I keep having the arguments I would have prosecuted were it me debating Obama last night instead of Romney. Again, I get the idea that there are only a select amount of states in play and only select demographics within those states, so I understand last night's strategy to capture the three undecided single moms in Ohio by communicating, "I'm nice. I'm not Bush. No more wars, I promise." However, I tend to concur with Pat Cadell (a political analyst on Fox News whom has the unique distinction of being both an out spoken critic of Obama and the 1980 campaign manager of Jimmy Carter), that there were ways for Romney to avoid being painted as a war mongering Bush 2.0 without curling up into the fetal position. He played it safe. Fine. But playing it safe doesn't strike me as particularly inspired leadership when Americans are dying in foreign wars.

So if I am to get a single thing done in the next 72 hours I must purge myself of these arguments here. I give you an abrogated foreign policy debate between F.Ryan, son of Terrance, warden of the South and Barack Obama, second of his name and Lord of the East . . . (I've been watching Game of Thrones, forgive me):

Mr. President, I don't doubt your sincerity in wanting to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I doubt your ability. You see sir, as history has shown us wars are either won or lost, not arbitrarily ended so they may serve as campaign slogans. Many people may not be aware that in Afghanistan, our longest war, 70% of US casualties have occurred within the last four years. That was your watch. And that 2/3rds of the cost of the war has been spent in the last four years. It would appear that much like the stimulus spending the American people are not getting a good return on the blood and treasure they entrusted you with. Last month alone a half dozen Afghan soldiers, trained, housed and fed by our military so that they may stand up when we stand down have turned on our men, killing them in cold blood. Across North Africa and the Middle East we see embassies under protest, under attack and under evacuation. You stand up in the UN and declare we will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, yet the biggest obstacle to tighter sanctions, Vladimir Putin, is sent a secret message via his proxy so that he'll know things will get easier after your reelection... easier for him. As a candidate for president you declared it folly not to negotiate with the worst actors around the world. You described Iran, Cuba and North Korea as, "tiny countries that don't pose a threat to us." Mr. President, as it is today, in 1941 Japan was a tiny country in comparison to the United States. As any junior analyst at the CIA can tell you, the geographical size and population of a nation do not dictate their threat level. Their determination does. And as we sit, four years later, Iran seems as determined as ever to acquire nuclear weapons. They pursue their goals, threaten our closest ally with a second holocaust, and we do nothing. Your strategy has failed. They are undeterred. And why shouldn't they be? One of your first acts as President was to tell them and the world that essentially America has been a problem. You stood on foreign soil and proclaimed that we, the greatest nation ever to grace God's green earth, have "failed to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world" and added "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” Mr. President you said these words in France. Let me ask you, were we dismissive at Normandy? Were we derisive at the liberation of Paris? Imagine the young Lieutenant coming in from patrol in Mosul where he spilled and spent blood that day only to come into his command post and hear his Commander-in-Chief call the country he spent all day defending, arrogant. I think your administration has failed to appreciate America's leading role in the world, and you have personally condemned it. In the Port of Spain you proclaimed, " [A]t times we sought to dictate our terms.” Your view on American history seems to have a theme - we are the problem. Mr. President, America is not the problem. America is the solution. I started this by stating that I don't doubt your sincerity in Afghanistan and Iraq, just your ability. Unfortunately the same can not be said of Libya. There has been much discussion on why a video and angry mobs were said to be at fault when it was clear there were neither. Discussions on why your Secretaries of Press, the UN, and State repeatedly and emphatically claimed that when our Embassy fell and four Americans died that a spontaneous protest was to blame. In your speech to the UN, nine days after the assault, you referenced this video and those protests no less than six times. Mr. President, it never happened. There were no protests. It was not due to a video. It was planned. It was premeditated. It was a terror attack. Not a "man caused disaster" as your National Intelligence Director insists on calling such attacks, not an "over seas contingency" as your Press Secretary refers to wars. It was an attack by terrorists. And the fog, the muddled haze that followed, which continues to this day, has been nothing short of dishonest. If the American people can not expect a straight answer on matters of life and death then how can they expect a straight answer on medicaid? On unemployment? On gas prices? So the question quickly becomes, why? Why do we see a foreign policy agenda unraveling before our eyes? I submit it is you. With all due respect sir you went into the office of President as a national security novice, and four years later the rest of us are paying the price. America trusted you and you have been irresponsible with that trust. And just for the record, the Navy classifies air craft carriers among their ships. Perhaps if you spent more time among world and military leaders and less time with David Letterman and raising crystal champagne glasses with vulgar rappers, you would know that. I think America has had enough of a foreign policy born of on the job training. The job is too important and your training is going too slow. You've had your four years to apologize for us. We're ready to go back to leading now.