Last month, GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain answered on live television that he would trade all the terrorism suspects at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for U.S. hostages. “I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer,” he said. Within just a few hours, [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Last month, GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain answered on live television that he would trade all the terrorism suspects at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for U.S. hostages. “I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer,” he said. Within just a few hours, he was asked about it again, again on live television and this time during a primary debate, and he quickly recanted his original answer, explaining that he’d “misspoke.” A friendly source explained to a conservative website that Cain’s original answer “was the result of lack of sleep and doing too many media appearances.”

Now, after Cain’s inconsistent, rambling five-minute answer to a question posed by a newspaper editorial board as to whether he supported the Libya intervention, Cain’s campaign is again explaining away his bizzarre comments by blaming them on a lack of sleep. The Associated Press reports:

Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said Monday that Cain had four hours of sleep because of a busy campaign schedule when he sat for the interview. He said Cain took his time answering because the candidate wanted to make sure he was focusing on the right problem.

The Cain campaign also lashed out at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board, with Gordon alleging that the video of Cain’s answer to the simple question (“So you agree with President Obama on [intervening in] Libya, or not?“) was “out of context in some measure.” The editor of the Journal Sentinel, Martin Kaiser, shot back on CNN today: “Trying to spin it and say it was edited or handled some other way is just not accurate.” Noting that it was a “pleasant conversation” and not a grilling, Kaiser went on:

I have to admit, quite a few of us have been in the business a long time, been through a number of these kinds of interviews, and afterwards we were really sort of stunned.

Watch the CNN interview with Kaiser here:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) ripped Cain’s answer in an interview with Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin:

There are individual candidates that need to step up their game… Each candidate has to demonstrate for the public that they’re ready for the job. And no one expects a person who hasn’t been commander-in-chief before to know everything about every topic, but Libya? I think it’s fair to ask our candidates to articulate a position. Cain has got to convince people that he’s got the depth of knowledge [to be president].

Cain, who compared U.S. foreign policy to making pizza, has been beset by a series of gaffes and errors, despite declaring several times that he is now a foreign policy expert. Perhaps it is just the grueling campaign schedule, but what of the grueling schedule of a U.S. President?

Former pizza company CEO and GOP candidate Herman Cain started his presidential campaign — quite by accident, it seems — as an advocate for a cherished Palestinian ideal to return to their homelands throughout historic Palestine by endorsing the “right of return.” But he’s [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Former pizza company CEO and GOP candidate Herman Cain started his presidential campaign — quite by accident, it seems — as an advocate for a cherished Palestinian ideal to return to their homelands throughout historic Palestine by endorsing the “right of return.” But he’s come a long way since then. Cain’s not “foreign policy dumb,” he says, and now he’s challenging reporters to take on his expertise in global affairs. He’s come so far on the Palestinian issue that he is even hedging about whether or not Palestinians have a national identity at all.

In an interview with the free Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom (or Israel Today), Cain, in attempt to show how President Obama’s “lack of a firm stand regarding Israel has emboldened Israel’s enemies,” made his most disparaging comments yet about Palestinians, verging on denying their existence as a people:

I think that the so-called Palestinian people have this urge for unilateral recognition because they see this president as weak.

In reality, the Palestinian national movement is decades old, if not more — and certainly older than Obama. But the most shocking part of Cain’s statement was his equivocation on the existence of the Palestinian people. As Center for American Progress analyst Matt Duss wrote last year:

Despite the fact that scholars such as Rashid Khalidi have established the emergence of a distinct Palestinian national consciousness in the 19th century, the offensive idea that the Palestinians don’t exist — or the equally offensive idea that they only exist as a negative reaction to the creation of Israel — is unfortunately still a fairly common belief among Israel hawks. [...]

As Peter Beinart noted in his recent piece in the New York Review of Books, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself made the claim in his 1993 book A Place Among the Nations.

With regard to Duss’s last point, it seems Israel Hayom is the perfect place for Cain to make his statement. In a 2008 New Yorker profile of the daily paper’s owner, American right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson, Connie Bruck wrote:

In the Israeli media world, Israel Hayom is referred to as Bibi-ton, because many believe that it serves as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, whose nickname is Bibi, and who has long received extraordinarily negative press coverage in Israel.

Cain’s latest comments about the “so-called Palestinian people” and his bogus interpretation of their national movement should give us an idea of what kind of progress (or lack thereof) a Cain presidency would make in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Herman Cain has stumbled into a number of foreign policy gaffes. But in a Meet The Press interview with David Gregory, Cain found himself revealing that his foreign policy vision is largely formed by neoconservatives while claiming that he was “not familiar” with the neoconservative [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Herman Cain has stumbled into a number of foreign policy gaffes. But in a Meet The Press interview with David Gregory, Cain found himself revealing that his foreign policy vision is largely formed by neoconservatives while claiming that he was “not familiar” with the neoconservative movement. The exchange read:

DAVID GREGORY: What about foreign policy advisers? Who has shaped your view on the U.S. in the world and foreign policy?

HERMAN CAIN: I’ve looked at the writings of people like Ambassador John Bolton. I’ve looked at the writings of Dr. Henry Kissinger, “KT” McFarland, someone who I respect.

GREGORY: Would you describe yourself as a neoconservative then?

CAIN: I’m not sure what you mean by neoconservative. I’m a conservative, yes. Neoconservative, labels sometimes put you in a box. I’m very conservative.

GREGORY: But you’re familiar with the neoconservative movement?

CAIN: I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement. I’m familiar with the conservative movement and let me define what I mean by the conservative movement. Less government. Less taxes. More individual responsibility.

Watch it:

While Cain may choose not to identify with neoconservativism, two out of the three individuals listed by Cain as shaping his foreign policy views are closely tied to the neoconservative movement.

One was John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who briefly served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under the George W. Bush administration. Bolton promotes many neoconservative policy positions, and served on the board of directors for Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative pressure group which openly pushed for war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq since 1998.

Another foreign affairs inspiration was Kathleen Troia ‘KT’ McFarland, who worked in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and now serves on the advisory board of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She writes a weekly column for Family Security Matters, a project launched by Islamophobe Frank Gaffney’s think tank.

Both Bolton and McFarland have embedded themselves within neoconservative institutions in D.C. In John Bolton’s case, this included advocating for an aggressively hawkish foreign policy at every turn. The lack of familiarity with neoconservatism could stem from Cain’s ignorance of foreign policy or perhaps it’s a savvy move to distance himself from the movement that spearheaded the campaign to start the unpopular Iraq war. But looking at those who inspire his worldview, Cain’s foreign policy seems to clearly lean into the neoconservative camp — whether or not he understands or admits it.