Speakeasy forum: Middle East Expert Agrees with Romney

Walid Phares

Middle East expert Walid Phares tells Newsmax.TV that "the war with the
jihadists is on" and that "the whole world is a battlefield" as a
result.

"The administration needs to explain to the American public that the war
with the Jihadists is on, even if we withdraw from Iraq, even if we
withdraw from Afghanistan," Phares tells Newsmax in an exclusive
interview. "The jihadists are not withdrawing. So it is a unilateral
withdrawal from the confrontation on behalf of the Obama administration.

"President Obama said that after bin Laden, al-Qaida is going down -
and this is evidence that al-Qaida is spreading in areas where it was
not operational, such as Libya and, of course, Somalia, Northern Mali,
Syria, Iraq."

As such, President Barack Obama's White House "needs to review its own
assessment of the strength of al-Qaida and its response to al-Qaida,"
Phares said.

"Gov. Romney was right on target in his important press release and
press conference," Phares said. "He was clear in stating that the Obama
administration failed in dealing with the Arab Spring. It's failed in
reaching out to the moderates, to the seculars, to the civil societies,
which, by the way, began against the Arab Spring.

"Gov. Romney has believed that they are part of the forces in the Arab
Spring since the beginning, but he blames the Obama administration for
allowing the extremists, the Muslim Brotherhood, to take over.

"Gov. Romney wants to ally himself and the United States with civil
societies, and the Obama administration wants to ally itself with the
Islamists," he added. "That's a huge difference between both."