Romney goes AWOL on Afghanistan

In his meticulously choreographed entry into the convention hall last night, Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney greeted the assembled delegates to convey the feel of a State of the Union address. But any resemblance to a commander-in-chief last night ended there. With tens of thousands of U.S. troops still in harm's way, Gov. Romney mentioned the war in Afghanistan exactly zero times. And for a man who opposed U.S. strikes in Pakistan to take out Osama Bin Laden and other high-value Al Qaeda targets, the silence on America's continuing conflict in Afghanistan is deafening.

During his remarks, Romney once again suggested his willingness to start a new war with Iran. But when it came to the old one in Afghanistan, the newly crowned nominee, who in March asked "how in the world can the commander in chief sleep at night, knowing that we have soldiers in harm's way that don't know exactly, precisely, what it is that they're doing there?" had nothing to say. Even Romney's staunch ally and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol was stunned at the unprecedented omission:

The United States has some 68,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan. Over two thousand Americans have died in the more than ten years of that war, a war Mitt Romney has supported. Yet in his speech accepting his party's nomination to be commander in chief, Mitt Romney said not a word about the war in Afghanistan. Nor did he utter a word of appreciation to the troops fighting there, or to those who have fought there. Nor for that matter were there thanks for those who fought in Iraq, another conflict that went unmentioned.

Leave aside the question of the political wisdom of Romney's silence, and the opportunities it opens up for President Obama next week. What about the civic propriety of a presidential nominee failing even to mention, in his acceptance speech, a war we're fighting and our young men and women who are fighting it? Has it ever happened that we've been at war and a presidential nominee has ignored, in this kind of major and formal speech, the war and our warriors?

The absence seems all the more glaring, given that four years ago Mitt Romney made fighting "this century's nightmare, jihadism'violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism" a centerpiece of his campaign. On the other hand, this time around Team Romney concluded that on the subject of Afghanistan, the less said the better. And with good reason.

For starters, Romney despite his subsequent denials opposed the kind of unilateral U.S. raids that would eventually kill Osama Bin Laden. On Aug. 1, 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama delivered a major speech on foreign policy. In addition to pledging to unilaterally launch strikes against Bin Laden and other high-value targets in Pakistan, Obama promised he would ramp up the U.S. effort in the under-resourced effort across the border in Afghanistan. In July 2008, Obama explained that "we must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights." But the first version of presidential candidate Mitt Romney said no.

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