Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and GOP Forget Iraq Mistake in Push for Iran War

Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and GOP Forget Iraq Mistake in Push for Iran War
Gingrich, Romney and Santorum pushed for the Iraq War. Now the media should make them explain what they’ve learned from being wrong and why we should trust their eagerness to bomb Iran.
by Peter Beinart | January 23, 2012 4:45 AM EST

Newt Gingrich thinks that because CNN’s John King asked about his personal life last week, the “elite, liberal media” is out to get Republican presidential candidates. Nonsense. If journalists really wanted to make Gingrich and his fellow GOP frontrunners squirm, they’d ask why they supported the war in Iraq.

It’s no secret that American political culture often suffers from amnesia. Still, there’s something amazing about the fact that Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney can breezily advocate war with Iran without ever having to explain what their support for the Iraq War says about their judgment on matters of war and peace.

In a debate last November, Gingrich said that if other methods fail, “you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its [the Iranian government’s] capacity to have a nuclear weapon.” He’s also promised to nominate as his secretary of state former Bush administration United Nations ambassador John Bolton, a man who has said that the only remaining “option is to take preemptive military action to break Iran’s program.”

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