Opinion

October 22, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The wide range of foreign policy issues discussed at Monday night’s third and final presidential debate revealed mostly narrow differences between the two major candidates. Despite the moderator’s commendable job, a number of important issues were never raised, issues that Americans who believe in America’s traditional social principles hold dear.

Image

Taxpayer funding of abortion around the world

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan instituted the Mexico City Policy, which keeps foreign aid from funding any organization that performs or refers for abortion. Barack Obama repealed this protection as one of his first acts as president. The Obama administration has since given $145 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and has asked for another $47 million this year. Mitt Romney has promised to issue an executive order “on day one” to keep American taxpayers from financing the killing of unborn children around the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed that attempts to reimpose the policy would be “debilitating to my efforts to carry out a considered foreign policy.” 

The Obama administration also played a legally dubious role in promoting Kenya’s new constitution, which opens the door to abortion on demand.

Despite the relatively small amount of money – at least by the standards of the Beltway Leviathan – the American people deserved a debate about this misuse of their money and influence.

China’s One-Child Policy

Obama’s decision to renew funding to UNFPA had a deeper impact: the UNFPA is involved in China’s brutal regime of forced abortion. This human rights abuse broke through the sleepy summertime news cycle when pictures of women forced into the procedure hit the internet.

This should not be a partisan issue. As Reggie Littlejohn has said, “No one can support forced abortion, because it is not a choice.” The Obama administration could have presented the peaceful release of Chen Guangcheng as a foreign policy accomplishment. However, pro-life activists appear to have foisted the release upon an uninterested or unwilling State Department that tried to force him to return to his village gulag and throw himself upon the mercies of his torturers.

Did Vice President Joe Biden represent American values when he said he would not “second-guess” the one-child policy? Will Romney’s ambassador work more closely with Chinese exiles to pressure Beijing to end this policy?

CLICK ‘LIKE’ IF YOU ARE PRO-LIFE!

Normalizing homosexuality as an anchor of foreign policy

Despite the blind eye it has turned to suffering Chinese women, the Obama administration is not devoid of a human rights agenda. It has placed promotion of the LGBT agenda at the heart of its advocacy.

In making this grandiloquent announcement last December, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said religious objections to homosexuality – an abiding pillar of traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – were no different than honor killings and widow burning.  The rest of the administration’s advocacy has veered between offensive and tone deaf.

At the same time, the acting ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte – a recess appointment whose refusal to take a polygraph about whether she was ever recruited to work for Cuban intelligence kept her from being confirmed – wrote an op-ed referred to traditionalists as “those who promote hatred.” Three dozen Central American leaders united in protest.

The U.S. Embassy made the poor decision to hold a “pride celebration” in Pakistan, the nation whose fundamentalist Muslim population is giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban regulars killing American soldiers. The Defense Department had only recently launched its re-education of the Marine Corps to comply with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, starting in the most dangerous region of Afghanistan. These Obama administration initiatives succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of untold numbers of Muslims – for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

U.S. participation in LGBT marches incited backlash in Serbia and Eastern Europe

When the administration threatened to cut off foreign aid to Gambia because of its rejection of homosexuality, President Yahya Jammeh replied, “If you want us to be ungodly for you to give us aid, take your aid away. We will survive.” 

The Obama administration has allowed its intolerant desire to force Western cultural norms on the rest of the world inflame virtually every continent on earth. Economists call this unintended consequences. Political scientists call it cultural imperialism. Either way, it has ill-served U.S. interests. Would a Romney State Department respect the cultures, and the traditional morality, of the rest of the world?

None of these questions were raised at last night’s debate, and the Romney campaign seems content to leave foreign policy out of its final electoral push. But Americans deserve a president who will answer these questions the right way.