Republican Candidates Aim at Obama Foreign Policy

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NYT

A small but revealing episode unfolded in the closing minutes of the last Republican presidential debate. After the candidates were asked to name the national security issue they most worry about, which had not yet been discussed, Rick Santorum cited radical Islamists in Central and South America.

Mitt Romney agreed, saying that Hezbollah, a militant Shiite group in Lebanon that is backed by Iran and Syria, was working in Mexico, Venezuela and throughout Latin America, posing an “imminent threat.” Earlier in the night, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas warned that Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization that controls Gaza, also were working in Mexico.

That the candidates would cite the same threat — one denied by the Mexican government, and which seemed to contrast with a State Department report that there are no Hezbollah-related operational cells in this hemisphere — was not a coincidence.

Now that several months of full-throated campaigning are on the books, a major thrust of the Republican foreign-policy argument has emerged: that President Obama has not strongly supported Israel and that he has been too soft on its adversaries, Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians. That softness, they say, extends to other parts of the world.

(More here.)