Matthew Yglesius looks at Romney, and sees a pathetic, clueless bedwetter:
The idea that we should be laying awake at night afraid that a group of at most several thousand people who control almost no territory or valuable military equipment might establish a universal caliphate or “collapse freedom loving nations like us” is ridiculous. Al-Qaeda’s goals are absurd, and obviously so, and one ought to say so confidently. The fact that a relatively small group of people with lunatic goals can nevertheless knock down giant office buildings and murder a huge number of people is, indeed, something to be afraid of but not nearly on the grand geopolitical level Romney is postulating here.
He (Romney) isn’t even a very good fear monger — hasn’t learned much from Cheney/Bush these last five years, that’s for sure. He’s strangely dispassionate about the whole business, like he’s talking about what he’ll have for dinner, instead of whuping the “jihadists”.