Santorum defends Iraq war policy
LEVITTOWN – Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has instead been drawn to Iraq. Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1950s fantasy classic, “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
“It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S.,” he continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”
The 12-year Republican senator from Pennsylvania said he’s “a big Lord of the Rings fan.” He’s read the first of the series, “The Hobbit” to his children (he has six).
But spokesman for Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr. questioned the appropriateness of the analogy.
“You have to really question the judgment of a U.S. Senator who compares the war in Iraq to a fantasy book,” said Casey spokesman Larry Smar. “This is just like when he said Kim Jong Il isn’t a threat because he just wants to ‘watch NBA basketball.'”
According to a Patriot-News editorial, Santorum said the North Korea dictator “doesn’t want to die; he wants to watch NBA basketball” as a reason for why Iran is the bigger nuclear threat.
Faced with a no-fantasy re-election battle, his toughest yet, against Democratic challenger and state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr., Santorum has been positioning himself as strong on national security.
To counter Casey claims that he’s voted with President George Bush “98 percent of the time,” Santorum pointedly mentioning their areas of difference, specifically in taking a hard line on Iran and its nuclear weapons program.
He called the Bush Administration’s policy to negotiate with Iran “at worst appeasement and at best constructive engagement, either of which are wrong.”
“They believe you can negotiate with [Iran President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs on the issue of nuclear weapons and you cannot,” Santorum said. “You cannot negotiate something away from someone who has a messianic vision to a religious conviction that they need this weapon.”
Santorum made his comments before the Bucks County Courier Times editorial board late last week. The Bucks County Courier Times is a sister paper of the Herald-Standard. Both are owned by Calkins Media.
Santorum said he managed to work out an agreement between Congress and the White House on a plan to toughen sanctions and fund Iranian pro-democracy groups.
But he seemed frustrated by questions about U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.
“I don’t think you ask that question,” he said. “I know that’s the question everybody wants to ask. But I don’t think anyone would ask that question in 1944, ‘Gee how long are we going to be in Europe?’ We’re going to be in Europe until we win.”
Asked whether he thinks U.S. troops will be in Iraq a half-century later, as they still are in Germany, Santorum said “potentially.”
“Having a presence there as we have since the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, is certainly not against the interests of America if in fact we’re welcome to be there,” he said.
Santorum insisted the U.S. needed to take out Saddam Hussein because he “by all accounts had weapons of mass destruction … he was fomenting terrorism, he was paying for terrorists to kill Israelis, and we has supporting terrorist objectives.”
“To say we’re being bogged down in Iraq, I disagree with you,” he said. “We are fighting the war that we are engaged in – Islamic fascism – in Iraq. We are fighting those people right now, the people who if we let would come here and destroy us.”
The 911 Commission report, however, found that while Saddam had been in contact with Al Qaeda, there was no evidence that the contacts ever turned into “a collaborative operational relationship” or that Iraq cooperated in the attacks against the U.S.
On the growing strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S.’s first post-911 nation-building effort, and the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, Santorum demurred.
“You know, what we have is a lousy enemy,” Santorum said about the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. “This enemy is really tough. And I underestimated this enemy … and the problem is American people underestimated this enemy.”
According to his campaign and published news reports, Casey also does not support a timeline for troop withdrawal and criticized Bush for going first to Iraq, the weakest link in the “Axis of Evil,” while Iran and North Korea have developed nuclear capabilities.
Casey has been invited to meet with the editorial board but has not yet agreed.
Alison Hawkes can be reached at 717-705-6330 or begin ahawkes@calkins-media.com ahawkes@calkins-media.com end