In recent days Chris Matthews, Steve Clemons and others have both pointed out the complete flipflop Mitt Romney performed on a Palestinian state: between his comments to a rightwing Zionist crowd back in May during his secretly-taped fundraiser in Boca Raton, FL, when he said, Forget about it, and his comments in his foreign policy speech at VMI two days ago, when he said it was a necessity.
Here are the two statements, the more recent one first, in excerpts of the speeches. I’ve highlighted the key difference.
Transcript of Romney’s foreign-policy speech Monday at the Virginia Military Institute:
The relationship between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel, for example, our closest ally in the region, has suffered great strains. The president explicitly stated that his goal was to put daylight between the United States and Israel, and he’s succeeded. This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran.
Iran today has never been closer to a nuclear weapons capability. It has never posed a greater danger to our friends, our allies and to us. And it has never acted less deterred by America, as was made clear last year, when Iranian agents plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in our nation’s capital. And yet when millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009; when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world; when they cried out, are you with us or are you with them, the American president was silent..
I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran and will — and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf. And I’ll work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination. For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions, not just words, that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated.
I’ll reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security. The world must never see any daylight between our two nations..
In Egypt I’ll use our influence, including clear conditions on our aid, to urge the new government to represent all Egyptians, to build democratic institutions and to maintain its peace treaty with Israel. And we must persuade our friends and allies to place similar stipulations on their aid…
Finally, I’ll recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel. On this vital issue, the president has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new president will bring the chance to begin anew.
Here are his remarks at the May fundraiser, in the recording released by Mother Jones:
I’m torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I’ve had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. Now why do I say that? Some might say, well, let’s let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions. And I don’t have a map here to look at the geography, but the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It’s—what the border would be? Maybe seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank…The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point, or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. Which is that the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel of course would have to say, “That can’t happen. We’ve got to keep the Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank.” Well, that means that—who? The Israelis are going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria, and this new Palestinian nation? Well, the Palestinians would say, “Uh, no way! We’re an independent country. You can’t, you know, guard our border with other Arab nations.” And now how about the airport? How about flying into this Palestinian nation? Are we gonna allow military aircraft to come in and weaponry to come in? And if not, who’s going to keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well, the Palestinians are gonna say, “We’re not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us what can land in our airport.” These are problems—these are very hard to solve, all right? And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, “There’s just no way.” And so what you do is you say, “You move things along the best way you can.” You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don’t go to war to try and resolve it imminently. On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state. I won’t mention which one it was, but this individual said to me, you know, I think there’s a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections. I said, “Really?” And, you know, his answer was, “Yes, I think there’s some prospect.” And I didn’t delve into it.
…The idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world.
The world must never see any daylight between our two nations..
then why bother with two nations? the world sees daylight between americans, why should the vision between the US and israel be seamless forever? that is absurd.
i am so sick of this.
Right Annie. We may as well go ahead and annex the client state at this point.
What leader of any nation would ever speak in these terms about another nation? It simply doesn’t happen. No nation which is not under brutal coercion subordinates its interests to another nation. We never speak in these absolutist and messianic terms about our closest European allies — Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, etc.
To argue that we must never see daylight between the United States and Israel is to demand that American interests be made eternally subordinate to Israeli interests. But the truth is that American interests and values are radically in conflict with Israeli interests and values across many dimensions.
Any American politician who uses this kind of extreme language is indeed an Israel Firster who will quite likely cause enormous problems for Americans.
If Israel were a *normal* nation — which was the original vision of Theodor Herzl — it would never make these kinds of excessive demands on the United States. But it is in fact a highly abnormal nation, one whose abnormality increases with each passing decade. It is essentially an ethno-religious nationalist cult that is dominated by Old Testament fundamentalists.
Romney’s “no daylight” comment must be read in light of the fact that there are acres of daylight between his own stated position on this and other controversial issues. He wants to be – no he already is – Panderer-in-Chief.
The fact one talks about daylight and not being seamless or grateful, or bullying or close is almost beside the point when discussing US-Israeli relations. A better question might be what is the status of US – Egyptian relations? Are they a friend, let alone a friend or ally where we might deploy daylight or not in ascribing the relationship. Syria, Yemen, even Turkey. Are they are friends, allies? In the midst of the so-called arab spring, who the hell are our friends? Turkey and Jordan… are they friends? Yes, but are the people of Jordan friends… if the Hashemite king goes, what of the US – Jordanian alliance. In this region, our only friend is Israel, if you define friendship going beyond the royal palace and extending into the population. If you define friendship as being a people who generally like America, then I would define Iran as a friend of the United States as being second only to Israel.