Indeed, barring some truly major overseas event, foreign policy matters may play less of a role in this election than in any in recent memory. The three televised debates have traditionally set aside one focusing on foreign policy matters, but you’d have to wonder whether they will bother this time around — unless it’s a session on foreign trade policy or maybe how isolationist the country should be.
Fact is, President Obama could lead a Navy SEAL team to neutralize al-Qaeda’s Ayman al- Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki, broker a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, engineer a South Korean buyout of North Korea, take out Iran’s nuclear operation, and resolve Pakistan-India tension — and get little credit in the polls.
That’s because those things don’t create a single job.
Bolton naturally blames Obama for the lack of focus on foreign policy.
“He never raises the issue unless he’s forced to” Bolton said, or when there are big operations such as the demise of Osama bin Laden.
Bolton, after declaring he was not a candidate, told us he was en route to — where else? — New Hampshire to give a speech Thursday on foreign policy.
Odd timing? Or laying the groundwork for 2016?
A bigger threat. Literally.
It’s bad enough that the Iranians are pushing ahead with their nuclear weapons program, backing terrorist groups and meddling in Iraq. Now it seems their quest for territorial expansion is also accelerating.
In fact, the country actually has gotten larger, by a whopping 14 percent, according to an announcement by the defense minister, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi. Vahidi, appearing this week on state-run television in Tehran, said Iran’s total area is larger than had been thought.
“The actual area of Iran” is 723,539 square miles, said Vahidi, as measured by new mapping software developed by the Iranian military. An earlier measure, used by most atlases, the CIA World Factbook and the geography textbooks used in Iranian schools, had the country’s area at 636,371 square miles, according to the Daily Star of Lebanon. “So now this new figure should be used,” Vahidi said.
If this is true, it means Iran, which by the old measure was the 18th-largest country in the world by area, would move up two spots, passing Libya and Sudan and coming in just behind 15th-ranked Indonesia, which, according to the CIA, is 735,358 square miles.
Title Creep, Part Deux
An item last month noted some improper media references to New Hampshire venture capitalist and Rick Perry fundraiser Greg Slayton as a former ambassador to Bermuda.
There is no ambassador to Bermuda, because it’s part of Britain. Slayton was only consul general there. The confusion may have arisen from reporters looking at his contribution-disclosure forms, on which he — or whoever filled them out for him — occasionally wrote “ambassador” in the space for listing “occupation.” (Slayton acknowledged to us that he should have made things clearer.)
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