90 Minutes of Time Wasted: The Last Presidential Debate

If you take blood  pressure medication, you could have skipped it for the 10/22/2012 foreign policy  debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama which was the most lackluster, uneventful…I can’t say it enough, boring debate since Sergei Prokafiev wrote his first symphony.

Nobody won that  debate and worse than that, the biggest losers were those of us who chose to watch it in its painful entirety. We learned nothing! It was simply another round of sound bites which never came close to the questions on my mind. For instance:

What is the truth  regarding the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack which claimed the lives of four Americans  on the sovereign soil of our embassy in Libya? Why did the administration call it a mob protest in response to an online video made in America which contained disparaging remarks about the prophet Mohammad weeks after the attack, when any  fool could see that the group of attackers were too well armed and too well organized for it to be anything but an act of terrorism?

Was this the political choice of explanation from the Obama Administration? At the same time, is the Romney campaign using the deaths of four Americans for political gain? If  Al Qaeda is truly on the run why is there resurgence throughout Iraq, all of North Africa, Libya and Mali? If our foreign policy is working so well then why is there the burning of American flags, violence in Egypt, Syria, and now
spilling over into Lebanon? While the U.S. condemns this publically it continues to grow day by day. Could it be that our condemnation holds no water? Could it be that our current economic weakness and out of control borrowing from foreign nations makes our adversaries fearless of the U.S.?

And what about a nuclear Iran? The President stated that the U.S. would stand with Israel “if” they were attacked. Israel is consistently attacked by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. When there is a nuclear Iran what might there be left to stand with after the first missile is fired? Mitt Romney only talked about Obama’s apology tour where Israel was excluded. He had a perfect opportunity to say the U.S. shouldn’t wait until Israel is attacked and that the United States, after all
other peaceful means are exhausted, will stand with them now as before, in the
event that a pre-emptive military strike is deemed necessary!  

Although this debate was designated for foreign policy only, (which didn’t happen), I would have liked a question and answer as to why the Fort Hood massacre is being deemed “work place violence” instead of the act of terrorism that it was? When a soldier of Middle Eastern dissent is exchanging emails with a known Islamic terrorist cleric, then commits mass murder against the men and women of our armed forces, what else would you call it? Why shouldn’t the murdered soldier’s family members and the wounded receive the same benefits as those injured on the battlefield?

These were the questions running through my mind as I watched the last debate and although a few were lightly touched upon, no conclusive and for that matter concise answers were given by either candidate. It was a sleeper from beginning to end!

I welcome your comments.

MJC