There’s also perhaps another reason. It doesn’t appear that Romney has any idea how to set himself apart from President Obama’s foreign policy, as the Los Angeles Times put it today:

Romney has roughed up Obama with a hawkish tone — at times bordering on belligerent. Yet for all his criticisms of the president, it has been difficult to tell exactly what Romney would do differently.

He has argued that reelecting Obama will result in Iran having a nuclear weapon — without explaining how. He has charged that Obama should have taken “more assertive steps” to force out the repressive regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad — but has said he is not “anxious to employ military action.” He accused Obama of tipping his hand to the Taliban by announcing a timeline for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, but also accepts the 2014 timeline.

And it almost seems as if the Romney campaign is looking to Obama for guidance. Soon after a report surfaced that the the Obama administration is considering the approval of arms transfers to Syrian rebels via Arab allies, the former Massachusetts governor announced that he would do the same (however, Obama administration officials publicly oppose militarizing the conflict any further at this point).

The Times points out that one key difference has been on military spending. Obama pushed through nearly $500 billion in cuts over the next ten years (with Congress adding another $500 billion), although military spending will continue to grow in that same period. Romney, however, plans to (needlessly) increase defense spending by nearly $2 trillion with no plan on how he will pay for it.

“A lot is made of Romney’s tough talk with respect to Russia and Iran and China, but even there it’s not like I see a dearth of toughness on the part of President Obama,” Cato Institute foreign policy expert Christopher Preble told the Times. “As a challenger, for someone like Mitt Romney, it really is incumbent on him to draw distinctions and differences. He doesn’t. It allows people to paint with a broad brush [what] they would guess … his response would be.”

U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus Has Been Pushing A 'Great Green Fleet'

So in theory, Congress should have no problem passing legislation to provide the funds to make this a reality. However, there are a few hurdles standing in the way: Republicans. The House GOP included a measure in the defense authorization bill this month prohibiting the Defense Department from buying alternative fuels if they cost more than “traditional fossil fuel.” And the Senate Armed Services Committee last week followed suit with an “even tougher” provision mirroring the House version but also exempts DOD from clean energy standards.

Why are the Republicans doing this? VoteVets.org chairman Jon Soltz pointed out yesterday that they get a lot of money from the oil and gas industry:

In short, Republicans would be forcing the military to go back to using the same fuels that hampered it from doing its job — and the same fuels that have resulted in the deaths of so many Americans.

Why? That’s the question that must be asked. And the answer is pretty simple. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Oil and Gas interests have donated 88 percent of their political contributions to Republicans this cycle — nearly $18 million. That’s the highest percentage they’ve given to Republicans since at least 1990.

And, boy, are Republicans delivering for them. Even if it means forcing the Pentagon to stop developing programs that could make our military more effective. Even if it means banning programs that would save the lives of our troops. There is nothing, it seems, that they value more than delivering for their dirty oil campaign donors.

Two Senate Democrats, Jim Webb (VA) and Joe Manchin (WV) joined the Armed Services Committee Republicans in voting for the measure. However, the amendment may have failed had Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who voted against a similar amendment, been present for the vote. The Hill reported last week that “[a] Collins spokesman said she had to miss the vote to speak with the commander of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine after the USS Miami fire. He said Collins would support biofuels if the issue comes up on the Senate floor.”

“While we all love the environment and want to be good stewards of the earth,” Soltz added, “the military isn’t on some kind of ecological mission when it comes to renewables. They’re trying to help ensure men and women come home to their loved ones.”

BIDEN: Looking at your kids, most you have kids here, and it was the first time in my career, my life, I realized someone could go out and I probably shouldn’t say this with the press here — but it’s more important, you’re more important.

For the first time in my life I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain and they just knew in their heart, they never get there again, that there was never going to get — there never going to be that way ever again. That’s how an awful lot you have feel.

There will come a day, I promise you, and you parents as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. [...]

So, hang onto each other. Hang onto each other. And I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you how deeply the five of us on this stage feel about the sacrifices you’ve made for this country. That doesn’t — that doesn’t fill the black hole. You should know only 1 percent of you have fought these wars and much less thank God than 1 percent of those that fought the wars are going through what you’re going through.

We owe you more than we can ever, ever repay you. As I said, my prayer is that that smile will come sooner than later, but I promise you it will come. God bless you all and my God protect our troops. Thank you.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow aired a clip of Biden’s speech:

“I think that candidate Romney has been breathtakingly off target, and naive and in fact wrong in his judgment about Russia when he said Russia is our number one foe. I cannot think of any statement that frankly is more inappropriately threatening and simply wrong by any calculus than that,” Kerry told Bloomberg.

Kerry revealed that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told him during a recent meeting that Russian leaders also think that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go. “We have much bigger problems on this planet in the Middle East, with the evolution of Egypt, with the challenge of Syria, terrorism, al-Qaeda in Yemen, and so forth,” Kerry said.

Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell similarly criticized Romney this week for his Russia comments. The former four-star U.S. Army general said Romney “really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements.” Powell added, “Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.”

Romney released an ad yesterday saying that he would get tough on China “on day one” of his presidency should he be elected. “President Romney stands up to China on trade and demands they play by the rules,” the ad says.

During an interview last night with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Huntsman — who has endorsed Romney for president — criticized the former Massachusetts governor and suggested he would pull back if elected:

HUNTSMAN: I think — this is a — this is a typical trajectory where during a campaign season you’re going to talk about China in ways that you’re hearing today. We’ve seen that election cycles gone by. They you get in office and I think Mitt Romney has the prospects of doing that which his most important for the U.S.-China relationship. Strengthening our own domestic economy and giving life and confidence to our creative class so we can get back on our feet.

If you want a strong U.S.-China relationship it starts right here at home and it starts with a stronger economy.

Watch the clip:

Huntsman was less diplomatic in his criticism of Romney on China last February, referring to his China policy as “wrongheaded.”

But Huntsman isn’t the only Romney-backer to differ with the presumptive GOP presidential nominee on China. Earlier this month, right-wing foreign policy don Bill Kristol called Romney’s attacks on the Obama administration’s handling of an escalating situation with a Chinese dissident “foolish.”

Even Romney’s own foreign policy advisers have praised President Obama on China. “I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China,” neoconservative Brookings scholar Robert Kagan said, adding, “I think he’s strengthened our position in Asia with our allies.”

Last night on CNN, Republican congressman Dana Rohrbacher (CA) — who’s been in a tete-a-tete lately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai — criticized Romney’s position. “I totally disagree with the governor,” Rohrbacher said:

ROHRABACHER: We should be looking for ways to get our troops out of Afghanistan at a quicker pace, not at a slower pace. We shouldn’t be committing ourselves to another 10 years of military involvement in Afghanistan and we can do that if we worked with all of the Afghan leaders rather than just trying to put all of our eggs in the Karzai basket and trying to force everybody to accept his power.

BLITZER: What Governor Romney says there should be an open-ended U.S. military and financial commitment to Afghanistan. He doesn’t like the timelines, if you will, but he’s even more aggressive in making sure that U.S. troops stay there to bolster that Afghan government and make sure that there’s security there. … What I hear you saying is you disagree not only with President Obama, but with Governor Romney, as well.

ROHRABACHER: I totally — yes, I totally disagree with the governor. If that is indeed his position I would like to talk to him about it.

Watch the clip:

Republicans in Congress have long been at odds on Afghanistan and a poll out last month found that a majority of Republicans say the war there hasn’t been worth fighting. Perhaps that’s why Romney won’t take a firm position and instead wants to kick the can down the road.

Later on the same network, the retried four-star U.S. Army general, referring to Romney’s claim that Russia is America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” had some advice for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee — cut out the hyperbole when talking about foreign policy:

POWELL: I think he really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements. I think he really needs to think carefully about these statements because they’re now on the wall for people to see. … Let’s not go creating enemies where none yet exist. Does this mean that we should trust Putin or Medvedev? No. Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.

Host Andrea Mitchell noted that Romney is attacking President Obama on his Iran policy, saying he’s “showing weakness.”

“Well I don’t know what Mr. Romney would prefer to do,” Powell said, “The fact of the matter is we need a negotiated solution and the only way you can get a negotiated solution is to talk to the other side.” Watch the clip:

Vice President Biden also recently chastised Romney for his militaristic rhetoric. “[L]oose talk about a war has incredibly negative consequences in our efforts to end Iran’s nuclear quest,” he said, adding that if war with Iran is “what governor Romney means by a ‘very different policy’ then he should tell the American people.”

And if Powell doesn’t know “what Mr. Romney would prefer to do” on Iran, as he said today on MSNBC, neither does anyone else. Romney has no real policy on Iran that differs much from the current administration’s approach. The New York Times reported recently that “when pressed on how, exactly, his strategy would differ from Mr. Obama’s, Mr. Romney had a hard time responding.”

Powell added that Romney’s foreign policy advisers “are quite far to the right”:

SCARBOROUGH: Are you concerned with the foreign policy advisers that Mitt Romney has surrounded himself with. That there aren’t enough sergeants and there aren’t enough people with on the ground experience and we seem to have another Republican candidate who is sort of top-heavy when it comes to neoconservatives around him.

POWELL: I’ve noticed that. I don’t know who all of his advisers are but I’ve seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right and sometimes I think they might be in a position to make judgements or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought. For example when governor Romney not to long ago said “The Russian federation is our number one geo-strategic threat.” Well, come on, Mitt, think. That isn’t the case.

And I don’t know whether Mitt really feels that or — [...] He’s been catching a lot of heck from the more regular GOP foreign affairs community. We’re kind of taken aback by it. How could you say that? Look at the world, there’s no peer competitor to the United States of America.

Watch the clip:

Powell’s right. Romney has surrounded himself with foreign policy advisers that are a bit far to the right. Many of them helped push for the war in Iraq and many others are trying to do the same with Iran. Perhaps this is why Romney, as one of his advisers told the New York Times, “doesn’t want to really engage on these issues until he’s in office.”

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe the United States should remove all its troops from Western Europe and let the Europeans defend themselves. Only 29% disagree, but another 20% are undecided.

Part of President Obama’s plan to cut nearly $500 billion in military spending over the next decade (DOD’s budget will still grow over that same period) includes cutting two Army brigades in Europe.

Back in February, CAP’s Lawrence Korb, Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman praised the Obama plan to scale back from Europe, adding that there is “no reason” to maintain such a large American presence there:

[T]he Obama administration’s plan to remove two brigades from Europe will focus U.S. military resources where they are most needed. There is no reason for the United States to continue stationing 70,000 troops on a stable continent that has more than enough resources to provide for its own defense.

The CAP report notes that the 2010 Sustainable Defense Task Force found the United States can reduce its troop presence in Europe and Asia by one-third without harming American security or interests.” Moreover, “withdrawing 33,000 troops from Europe and 17,000 from Asia — far more than Panetta’s proposed withdrawal of two brigades — would enable savings $80 billion over the next decade.”

Rohrabacher reportedly tried to push Karzai to incorporate warlords into his government and urged the Afghan president to institute a “federalist decentralization of power.”

Last night on CNN during an interview with host Wolf Blitzer, who was incensed that Karzai blocked Rohrabacher from entering Afghanistan, Karzai said he wouldn’t be changing his mind on the issue:

BLITZER: So you’re not going to let him back into your country, Dana Rohrabacher?

KARZAI: Definitely not.

BLITZER: Ever, ever?

KARZAI: Until he changes his [inaudible], until he shows respect to the Afghan people, to our way of life and to our constitution. No foreigner has a place asking another people, another country, to change their constitution.

Blitzer asked Karzai about “the concept of freedom of speech.” “The freedom of speech is good,” Karzai said, adding, “But the freedom of speech with regard to other countries is another issue.” Watch the clip:

Rohrabacher complained last month that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “should have stoop up” to Karzai, whom he referred to as a “prima donna,” and fought to get him into Afghanistan.

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

Of course the neocons are now pouncing on the president. “This is breathtaking,” Mitt Romney adviser Max Boot writes, “The commander-in-chief at least has an obligation to solicit [the commanders'] views and take them into careful consideration.” Right-wing Washington Post blogger Jen Rubin piled on today too. Obama “actually doesn’t all that much care if we ‘win’ or not,” said Rubin, who also quoted AEI’s foreign policy leader Danielle Pletka saying Obama “just as hates the word ‘victory.’”

But did President Obama really choose to ignore his top commanders’ advice when making his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan? A spokesperson for House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), a strong critic of the president on national security issues, told Politico’s Austin Wright that the Times story was most likely “inaccurate”:

“McKeon is reserving judgment,” Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the HASC chairman, tells Morning Defense in an email. “The report is so dramatically at odds with recent communications between the committee, commanders on the ground and senior administration officials that it must be inaccurate.”

A “senior defense official” also told Wright that “[t]he suggestion that the White House and the Department of Defense haven’t consulted closely on the major decisions on Afghanistan over the past three years is simply incorrect.”

Moreover, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time Obama announced his withdrawal plans in June 2011, Gen. David Petraeus, said then that, while he did not recommend the plan that Obama ultimately decided on, he was indeed consulted:

“I provided assessments of risk. I provided recommendations. We discussed all of this again at considerable length. The president then made a decision. … And so that’s how I would layout the process that took place, the very good discussion, this was indeed vigorous. All voices were heard in the situation room. And ultimately the decision has been made. And with a decision made, obviously I support that.”

So no, Obama did not decide to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan without consulting his top military commanders.

Last year, President Obama signed into law a budget scheme that threatens to saddle the U.S. military with nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. President Obama’s own defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has called cuts of this magnitude “devastating” to our national security. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has plainly said that such a reduction means “we would not any longer be a global power.” Despite these warnings, the Obama administration has pledged to veto an attempt to replace these cuts with savings in other areas. [...]

With the United States on a path to a hollow military, we are hardly in a position to exercise leadership in persuading our allies to spend more on security. And in fact the Obama administration has failed to exercise such leadership. Quite the contrary; a multiplier effect has set in: The administration’s irresponsible defense cuts are clearing the way for our partners to do even less.

There’s one major flaw in Romney’s argument: Obama alone is not responsible for the $1 trillion in military spending reductions over the next decade. The Obama administration did usher in nearly $500 billion in cuts over the next decade, but those cuts — contrary to Romney’s suggestion — have “real buy in” from the military’s top brass, as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said. Panetta supports the cuts too, saying the U.S. will still have “the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time.”

Congress, however, is responsible for the other $500 billion in military spending cuts as a result of the bipartisan debt deal that Obama signed into law. Those reductions are set to take place because of the sequester the deal put in place should lawmakers fail to agree on how to find savings elsewhere (House Republicans want to cut much needed programs for the nation’s poorest to offset the military spending cuts).

Indeed, as the Washington Post noted, “Romney’s statement fails to note that the sequester was part of a deal negotiated by the White House and leaders of both parties, a sweeping proposal that was approved by nearly three-quarters of the House Republican conference and six in 10 Senate Republicans.”

But on the substance, Romney is also wrong to claim that the U.S. military can’t withstand $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade. As CAP defense budget expert Lawrence Korb noted, “[t]his would, in real terms, allow the Pentagon to spend at its 2007 levels.”

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who led the Pentagon at the time of the raid, and Vice President Biden said they advised Obama against the raid. And during a portion of an interview with Charlie Rose that aired on CBS This Morning yesterday, Gates said that “people don’t realize” how tough the decision was. PBS aired the full interview last night and Gates expounded on the consequences, saying a failed raid could have been “catastrophic” militarily and might have cost Obama re-election.

Rose then wondered if “any thinking American,” as Romney put it, would have made the same decision as Obama:

ROSE: Nobody can say “I would have made the same decision.” You don’t really know until you’re in the room and you listen to what the best people you know say to you and then you have to go as president and decide.

GATES: Right, absolutely.

Watch the clip:

Later in the interview, Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, also disagreed with Romney’s contention that Russia is American’s “number one geopolitical foe.”

“Do you agree with Governor Romney that Russia is our principal adversary or how he’s characterized the national security issue?,” Rose asked. “No, I don`t think so,” Gates replied.

Romney has assumed that Obama was assured of bin Laden’s presence at the compound and all he had to do was give the order to get him. But as Gates (and others) has noted, “There wasn’t any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial.” The former defense secretary expounded on the difficulty surrounding Obama’s decision this morning during an interview on CBS This Morning, particularly regarding the lack of information on bin Laden’s presence at the compound, and the ramifications if the raid failed or bin Laden wasn’t there:

ROSE: What were your concerns?

GATES: I had no doubts that the SEALs could perform the mission. My concern was whether or not he was there. People don’t realize that what made the decision tough for the president was we didn’t have once single piece of hard data that he was actually in that compound. Not one. The whole thing was a circumstantial case built by analysts at CIA.

ROSE: There was no single person who could tell you he was in that building. No single person had seen him in that building.

GATES: Right. The crux of the decision revolved less about the efficacy of the military piece of it than the consequences for us if he wasn’t there in terms of the relationship with Pakistan, in terms of the war in Afghanistan. … But I’ve always thought that it was a very courageous call. If this mission had failed, it could have put the war in Afghanistan at risk and that was one of my principle concerns.

Watch the clip:

Romney doesn’t really know much about the raid that killed bin Laden, at least that’s the sentiment he displays in public. But perhaps that’s because, as one of his foreign policy advisers has said, Romney “doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office.”

Reuters quoted a leader from one of the Islamic groups protesting Lady Gaga’s concert:

“She’s a vulgar singer who wears only panties and a bra when she sings and she stated she is the envoy of the devil’s child and that she will spread satanic teaching,” said Salim Alatas, the Jakarta head of hardline Islamic Defender Front (FPI). “This is dangerous.”

Police denied Lady Gaga’s permit out of concern that they could not guarantee her safety.

Indonesia, a nation of 240 million and has more Muslims than any other country, is secular and, as the AP notes, “has a long history of religious tolerance” but “a small extremist fringe has become more vocal in recent years.”

Indeed, last week, religious extremists tried to disrupt a book tour by Canadian author and NYU professor Irshad Manji. Groups like the Indonesian Mujahidin Council and the FPI demonstrated and threatened violence against Manji and her associates. “Things got so serious that organizers had to pull me to another floor as cops blocked the elevators,” Manji wrote on Facebook. The National Post in Canada reported that “the FPI accused Ms. Manji of conspiring to spread homosexuality among Indonesian Muslims.”

“Four years ago, I came to Indonesia and experienced a nation of tolerance, openness and pluralism,” Manji said. “Things have changed.”

Also last week, rights group Pro-Democracy People reported that officials sealed off 17 Christian houses of worship after protests from the FPI and other groups. “This is a dark time in the history of religious freedom and tolerance in [the Indonesian province of] Aceh,” said the group’s spokesperson.

Human Rights Watch today called on United Nations member states to “urge Indonesia to adopt specific measures to ensure religious freedom, free expression, and accountability for abuses.” Elaine Pearson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said “[c]ountries should be asking Indonesia hard questions about why over the past four years violence and discrimination against religious minorities is getting worse, and why Indonesia continues to imprison peaceful activists.”

Photo: Getty Images

Moreover, seeming to concede President Obama’s dominance of national security issues this campaign season, a Romney adviser told the Times that Romney isn’t interested in talking about foreign policy. “Romney doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office,” the adviser said.

And there’s good reason. Romney’s inexperience on foreign policy and national security issues has dogged his campaign with confusion, ignorance and private and public disagreements among Romney’s campaign advisers and surrogates:

AFGHANISTAN

Romney has been “all over the map” on Afghanistan. As the Washington Post reported late last year, Romney “has not explained what he thinks the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is at this point and what would constitute success.” And keeping with his adviser’s above statement, Romney said in a major foreign policy speech that he’d wait until becomes president to “order a full review of our transition to the Afghan military.”

Romney also says that the U.S. should not be negotiating with the Taliban, a position that puts him at odds with his top national security campaign surrogate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), his own advisers and even former top Bush administration officials. “Romney’s supporters and foreign policy advisers argue that after a decade at war, the only option is a political settlement,” the Times noted.

IRAN

Romney said that if Obama is re-elected, Iran will get a nuclear weapon. “If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” he said. That line “caused some of his advisers to cringe” the Times reported this weekend. But overall, again, Romney has no real policy on Iran that differs much from the current administration’s approach. Romney has proposed much of what Obama is already doing. The Times noted that “when pressed on how, exactly, his strategy would differ from Mr. Obama’s, Mr. Romney had a hard time responding.”

But Romney does occasionally ramp up bellicose rhetoric on Iran which prompted a former Israeli Mossad director to say the former Massachusetts governor “is making the situation worse” with Iran. Romney has ignored what the IAEA, U.S. and Israeli intelligence think about Iran’s nuclear program and his campaign advisers even attacked the Obama administration for public discussion of the consequences of attacking Iran.

RUSSIA

Russia “is without question, our number one geopolitical foe,” Romney said in March. The Washington Post called the remark “a bit puzzling,” given Russia’s post-Cold War global standing and less adversarial relationship with the United States. Even McCain seemed a bit wary of endorsing that point of view.

And the co-chairman of the Romney campaign’s working group Russia, Leon Aron, disagrees with Romney’s contention that, as the Times put it, “natural resources could vault Russia to a position of global influence rivaling any nation by midcentury.” Aron wrote last month that “Russia’s most serious risk stems from a near-fatal dependence on the price of oil.”

CHINA

Romney’s regularly hypes the Chinese military threat and ignores the need for engaging China diplomatically and economically. In fact, former GOP presidential candidate and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who declared himself a Romney supporter, said that Romney’s China policy is “wrongheaded.” Even one of Romney’s top foreign policy advisers praised President Obama on China. “I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China,” said Robert Kagan.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE/MIDDLE EAST

While Romney often throws out the baseless attack line that Obama has thrown Israel “under the bus,” the presumptive GOP nominee has offered no real plan to achieve peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In fact, Romney has said that the U.S. “should not play the role of leader” in the Middle East peace process. “My inclination is to follow the guidance of our ally Israel,” he said last October.

Romney criticized Newt Gingrich for saying Palestinians aren’t people, but again, he said he’d ask the Israelis what his position would be. “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’” Former U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration Martin Indyk said that statement implied that he would “subcontract Middle East policy to Israel.”

VETERANS

The Romney campaign has attacked President Obama for not doing enough for the nation’s veterans, yet Romney has no plan to address various issues affecting the U.S. military — for example, veterans’ health care and unemployment or servicemembers’ education.

TERRORISM

In 2007 and 2008, Romney based his national security policy during his failed presidential bid on the need to fight “radical jihad” and the threat from those wanting to unite the world “under a single Islamic caliphate.” During that campaign, Romney also said he does “not concur” with then Sen. Obama’s plan to go after “high-value intelligence targets” in Pakistan with or without permission. And referring to Osama bin Laden, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

But now, Romney barely mentions terrorism, jihadists or an Islamic caliphate and claims that “of course” he would have done what Obama did and ordered the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader last year. “Any thinking American” would have ordered the raid, Romney said. Apparently “any thinking American” does not include Vice President Biden and Robert Gates, who was Defense Secretary at the time of the raid.

The Times also reported this weekend that Romney’s foreign policy advisers — many of whom helped push for the Iraq war and are now doing the same with Iran — are themselves divided. “There are two very different worldviews in this campaign,” on adviser said. Some of the more mainstream views within the campaign have resulted from “the scar tissue they developed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other Bush-era experiments in the exercise of American power.” But there also remains the more hawkish “Bolton faction,” referring to former Bush administration ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton.

So it’s clear why Romney doesn’t want to engage on foreign policy and national security issues in this year’s presidential campaign: his advisers don’t agree with him or each other. And Romney either doesn’t have any national security policies, they aren’t different from President Obama’s, or as recent polling has suggested, they aren’t very popular.