What Would Romney’s Mid-East Policy Look Like?

If his advisors are any indication, it won't be pretty. Adam Serwer recently reported on the troubling past of Walid Phares, a Romney foreign policy advisor who has major baggage from the Lebanese civil war. Mario Loyola responded with a half-baked defense of Phares. Serwer fights back. On Phares' general mindset:

[I]n Phares' book Future Jihad, which Loyola describes as an "indispensable contribution," Phares argues that prior to 9/11, American foreign policy was essentially under the control of Islamic fundamentalists. "[T]he Wahabi influence was so profound and subtle that it made its arms within the State Department, CIA, and information agencies think that they, not the Wahabis, were in control of policy." It's hard to find a foreign policy decision Phares disapproves of that isn't the result of covert Islamist infiltration, from US policy during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Bill Clinton's intervention in the Balkans to support for ending Lebanon's civil war along terms favorable to Syria.

Ackerman asks how Phares would respond to the Arab Spring:

If Romney wins, Phares is likely to get a high-level position advising Romney's Mideast policy. Romney wants to help the Arab Spring succeed, which is a worthy goal. It's also a goal surely to be set back by any affiliation with Phares. The idea that the Arab world's democratic forces would embrace a man tied to sectarian massacres of Muslims, and who argued that Christian Arabs are a different ethnic group than Muslim Arabs, doesn't survive a second's worth of scrutiny.

Larison agrees:

This is why the selection of Phares as one of Romney’s advisers matters. It is another hint of the alarmist foreign policy Romney favors, and it tells us that Romney’s judgment in selecting advisers may not be all that good. Given Romney’s tendency to invoke expertise and his willingness to defer to those he considers experts in a field, it matters a great deal that Romney considers Phares a reliable guide to Middle Eastern affairs.

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