Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

As more information emerges about Mitt Romney’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares, Romney’s campaign, no doubt, will face increasing scrutiny over their decision to hire the outspoken anti-Muslim advocate. But potentially even more concerning than Phares’ ties to the anti-Muslim far-right in the U.S. are the allegations — outlined in Adam Serwer’s profile of Phares — that the now-Romney adviser was one of the chief ideologists in the Lebanese Forces, a Lebanese Christian militia that committed atrocities during Lebanon’s civil war.

How Romney and his campaign will respond to the newly publicized facts that one of their top foreign policy advisers — indeed a former associate of Phares’ told Serwer that Romney “promised Phares a high-ranking White House job helping craft U.S. policy in the Middle East” — used Christian-sectarian ideology to justify the mass slaughter during the Lebanese civil war.

But Romney has called for the firing of public officials for far less than participating in war atrocities.

Romney said he would fire Obama adviser David Plouffe for comments saying Americans won’t vote based based on the employment rate. Romney said:

If David Plouffe were working for me, I would fire him and then he could experience firsthand the pain of unemployment,”

Romney called upon his GOP rival, Gov. Rick Perry, to “repudiate” anti-Mormon comments made by Perry supporter Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And in a September GOP debate, Romney said that if president he would fire Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for his failure to resuscitate the U.S. economy. Romney said:

I’d be looking for somebody new. I think Ben Bernanke has overinflated the amount of currency that he’s created. QE 2 did not work, it did not get Americans back to work, it did not get the economy going again … We’re growing now at 1 to 1 and a half percent.

Romney and his campaign have a precedent of considering disagreements over monetary policy and electoral policy to be fire-able offenses. And expressing intolerant sentiments about Mormonism is worthy of “repudiation.”

The Romney campaign appears to accept Phares’ public association with the Islamophobic Clarion Fund and anti-Muslim blogger Robert Spencer. But given Romney’s record of calling for the firing of individuals for far less than ties to a violent militia, will he apply the same standard to Walid Phares?