American voters preferred a more comforting fiction manufactured by Barack Obama and his backers which promised that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism had receded. They were wrong, and the establishment of the Islamic State brought with it a wealth of unimaginable new horrors.

◼ Romney capitalizes on 2012 clairvoyance about today’s global Hellscape with searing op-ed - HotAir

The usual cast of characters will emerge to scoff and mock, too. It’s all they have left.

◼ 'Bullying, invasion and regional wars': Hawkish Mitt Romney warns Obama makes the world less safe by slimming US military to save cash for more domestic spending - DAVID MARTOSKO, US POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

◼ Mitt Romney: The need for a mighty U.S. military - Washington Post

Russia invades, China bullies, Iran spins centrifuges, the Islamic State (a terrorist threat “beyond anything that we’ve seen,” according to the defense secretary ) threatens — and Washington slashes the military. Reason stares.

Several arguments are advanced to justify the decimation of our defense. All of them are wrong.

The president asserts that we must move to “a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity.” The old order, he is saying, where America’s disproportionate strength holds tyrants in check and preserves the sovereignty of nations, is to be replaced....

Some argue that the United States should simply withdraw its military strength from the world — get out of the Middle East, accept nuclear weapons in Iran and elsewhere, let China and Russia have their way with their neighbors and watch from the sidelines as jihadists storm on two or three continents. Do this, they contend, and the United States would be left alone.

No, we would not. The history of the 20th century teaches that power-hungry tyrants ultimately feast on the appeasers... READ IT ALL, AT THE LINK.