America, Israel and Romney Speak
Yesterday, Mitt Romney spoke at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2009 summit in San Diego. Race-4-2012 carries the text of the speech and a bit of commentary. The speech has gotten a great deal of press because of its broad condemnation of Iran and strong disagreement with the current administration’s handling of that rogue nation – the now widely quoted “unalloyed evil” comments. What I found most interesting were these comment
America and Israel are bound together by common commitments and shared values. We believe in representative democracy and human rights. We believe in the rule of law–in learning, scholarship, and free inquiry. We believe in the dignity of the human soul and in its God-given right to ascend above government domination . . . with freedom to speak, worship, associate and think as one desires.
And because we share the same values, we also share many of the same adversaries. We reject oppression, terrorism, authoritarianism. Violent Jihadists have referred to America as the “great Satan” and to Israel as the “little Satan.” Of course, they don’t recognize the irony, committed as they are to the imposition of power over others, to violence, to brutality, to the subjugation of women and girls and to bigotry and racism.
Israel has been fighting all of these things from the moment it was born. As the United States carries on that fight in countries scattered across the globe, we know that Israel is America’s most ardent ally in the Middle East.
Those words are not that remarkable. Until recently they were heard over and over and over again as the bulwark of American policy towards Israel and the Middle East in general. The “values” portions of those statements were words heard in pulpits, especially evangelical pulpits, throughout the nation.
What fascinates me is that so many in the last presidential election cycle were willing to talk about how different Mormons were than the rest of us. Yet, on this matter I cannot find a hair’s breadth of difference. Yes, the evangelical mood concerning war has moderated slightly in recent years, but a nuclear Iran should be, if it has not already, returning that mood back to the harsh reality that some people and nations simply are not nice.
The statement, particularly when compared with statements by other presumed Republican hopefuls in recent months on the same region, sounds decidedly presidential. Our nation seems to have lost the big picture. Mitt Romney is working very hard to give it back to us. We should listen.
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