Newt Gingrich offered up a sweeping critique of American policy toward the Islamic world during his appearance at today’s Republican Jewish Coalition presidential candidates’ forum.
“We need a dramatically rethought strategy for the Middle East,” the former House speaker and current Republican frontrunner told the gathering on Wednesday afternoon.
In comments that he acknowledged at the outset were "a little bit politically incorrect," Gingrich said he was "very, very worried about our entire relationship with radical Islam," saying it is currently based on lies, self-deception and appeasement.
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He reiterated his criticism of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent speech at the Saban Forum about Israel, calling it “outrageous.”
“This one-sided continuing pressure that says it’s always Israel’s fault no matter how bad the other side is has to stop,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich connected his criticisms of President Obama’s policies toward Israel to his broader criticisms of the president’s approach toward the Islamic world.
Gingrich said that the United States was engaged in a “long struggle with radical Islamists.”
He compared the current state of America’s reckoning with the threat posed by radical Islam to where the country stood in 1946 when, he said, the U.S. was still trying to figure out the Soviet Union.
Ultimately, he said, the U.S. decided to try to contain the Soviet empire “until it broke.”
Today, he said, “We have mortal enemies who are determined to kill us.”
Gingrich also hit Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for remarks she made at the Saban Forum about instances of discrimination against Israeli women, even as Clinton and State Department officials continue to meet with the Saudis.
Gingrich decried what he called “the one-sided moral disarmament of the Judeo-Christian civilization.”
And he lashed out at the State Department: “We are morally disarmed by a State Department incapable of articulating the cause of freedom.”
Gingrich also reiterated his vow to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem to great applause.
He also vowed as president to appoint John Bolton, the Bush administration’s hawkish U.S. ambassador, as his secretary of state.
He fielded a question from the audience on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and with Syria’s bloody crackdown on its dissidents.
Regarding Iran, he said: “The only rational long-term policy is regime replacement.”
He also said he would focus on covert efforts to undermine the Iranian regime, support the sabotage of its gasoline supply and “fund every dissident group in the country.”
Finally, he expressed concern over whether Iran might get a nuclear weapon sooner than expected: “It’s better to stop them early than to stop them late.”
On Syria, he said that the U.S. should try to replace the Assad regime and do everything it can without using American forces to achieve this goal.
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