NJ Governor Chris Christie Gives Foreign Policy Speech In New Hampshire

Chris Christie gives a speech on foreign policy in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during which he warned that are Sunni allies might support ISIS if we don't do what they say..

(Darren McCollester/Getty Images)

I realize it must be tough to run a big state while also campaigning for the job of running the entire universe. But of late the pressure seems to be getting to Chris Christie.

I witnessed an excellent example of that last week when I finally got my hands on a recording of what was billed as the governor's major foreign policy speech May 18.

The speech was in New Hampshire and I didn't attend it. But I did read the prepared remarks sent out in advance by the campaign. Among them was this gem:

"If we don't have a plan to stop Bashar al-Assad in Syria, or Iraq in Yemen, what's to stop governments lending support to proxy forces like Al Qaeda and ISIS?"

Huh? Never before have I seen so many gaffes in so few words.

For one thing, Iraq is not in Yemen. Its forces are pinned down at home defending against ISIS.

For another, at the moment Christie was set to deliver the speech, ISIS was also active in Syria, besieging Assad's forces that were defending the city of Palmyra.

If I had attended the speech, I would have asked Christie what he wanted to stop Assad from doing. If it was defending Palmyra, he got his wish. The city was overrun by ISIS two days later with mass executions to follow.

And then there's his assertion about "governments" that are taking the side of ISIS.

What governments? Christie ruled out Iran, which is helping us fight ISIS in Iraq, so that leaves what he termed our "moderate Sunni allies," among them Saudi Arabia.

If our "allies" are leaning to ISIS, then they are not allies. They're enemies. That should be front-page news.

But it wasn't. News accounts didn't mention that part of the speech, so I had no way of knowing whether Christie really had stuck that particular loafer between his lips.

His campaign wouldn't provide a recording or transcript - for good reason, it turned out. When I finally tracked down a recording the other day, I found that he had turned a small gaffe into a major one. Here's what he said:

"If we don't have a plan to stop Bashar al-Assad in Syria or in Yemen what's to stop governments lending support to proxy forces like Al Qaeda and ISIS?"

Assad in Yemen? His forces would have to traverse 1,000 miles of Saudi desert to get there. And of course they're pinned down fighting ISIS at home.

His campaign later told me Christie meant to name Iran as the country meddling in Yemen. But that's the same as admitting that, when handed a faulty script, Christie couldn't rely on his own knowledge of the region.

That would be fine if Christie were taking the position of his arch-enemy Rand Paul on the Mideast. The Kentucky senator has made it plain he believes the U.S government should stop starting wars in the Mideast precisely because our political class is incapable of comprehending the intricacies of the region.

(ADD: Note how Paul here rather cleverly offers to recognize a Kurdish homeland. That, boys and girls, is how you bring pressure on Turkey to crack down on ISIS for the first time.)

But Christie wants more war. We need to "take action today" he said at one point and "The price of inaction is steadily rising," at another.

What sort of action? He made that plain in an appearance on Fox News last week. When asked what the U.S. should do to combat ISIS, he replied, "If a President Christie had drawn a red line in Syria and said that if Assad uses chemical weapons, we'll take him out, then we would have taken him out."

Christie didn't say just where the U.S. president gets the authority to "take out" a foreign leader on a whim. It's certainly not in the Constitution.

The ancient Roman city of Palmyra in Syria before it was overrun by ISIS two days after Chris Christie gave a speech calling for the U.S. to "stop" the regime defending the city..

And of course if we had taken Assad out, that would have removed the last obstacle to a takeover by Islamic radicals. Even with a strong army, the Syrian government lost Palmyra. And the local Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front warned last week that it will soon take Damascus and forcibly convert all the Alawites, an Islamic group viewed as heretical by the Sunni.

As Paul has pointed out, removing secular dictators in the Mideast ranks among the biggest blunders in American military history. But whoever's putting words into Christie's mouth hasn't figured that out yet.

Those words deserve more attention than they've gotten so far. Christie's speech was full of assertions - or should I say accusations? - that amount to blackmail by our Sunni allies, such as a reference to ISIS in which he said "When those allies lose confidence in us, they take matters into their own hands."

I've heard this argument advanced by other so-called "neo" conservatives, but never before so blatantly as in Christie's comment.

Our governor would do us all a great service if he would name all those governments poised to support Al Qaeda and ISIS if we don't do their bidding. Then we can cut out the middleman and bomb them instead of ISIS.

Or better yet, stick to running the state.

ADD: When you read the entirety of Christie's speech it's obvious that he expects the U.S. president to do the bidding of the Gulf states - and their dirty work as well.

But the simple fact is that it's been known since 2012 that our alleged "allies" in the region wanted to set up an Islamist stronghold inn Syria. Here's a column by Juan Cole in which he cites a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency memo making that point:

Or in other words, all of those neocons like Christie and liberal internationalists like Hillary Clinton have been playing into the hands of Islamist radicals by calling for the ouster of Assad.

But then that was obvious back in 2012, when I wrote a column quoting ex-CIA agent Bob Baer saying "Anyone with any common sense knows the Muslim Brotherhood would take over" if the neocons succeeded in weakening Assad. The reality turned out to be even worse as ISIS edged out the Muslim Brotherhood.

And if Christie's wondering just what country is arming ISIS, perhaps he should read this article about how a Turkish newspaper is being prosecuted for terrorism for publishing photos and videos showing Turk officials smuggling arms to the Syrian rebels.

It was obvious from the beginning that all of this was a ploy by the Saudis to sucker the U.S. into ousting Assad so they could set up yet another Wahhabi Muslim state.

If we take Christie at his word, he would do the Saudis' bidding if elected president. He also made it clear that he regards it as the proper role of the president do Benjamin Netanyahu's bidding as well.

He also wants you to think he'd be a tough president. Well, tough presidents tell foreign leaders what to do. not the other way around. Think of Dwight Eisenhower in the Suez crisis telling the British, French and Israelis what to do - and them doing it.

That's a tough leader.

Christie has made it clear he's a follower.

Now if he'd just tell us exactly whom he would follow.



THIS JUST IN: Christie's finishing eighth in the latest Iowa poll. If he thinks he's going to rise by channeling Rudy Giuliani's 2008 strategy he's wrong.

Once again he's finished well below the Ben Carson Line.

The rest of the field is channeling the 2008 version of Rudy as well, except of course for Rand Paul.

He's the sole Republican doing anything to separate himself from the pack on the Patriot Act and foreign policy. That could help in a crowded field.

As for Christie, he's as clueless as the rest of them when it comes to the Mideast. They're all willing to take their orders from the Saudis. If you doubt that, ask yourself why they they support the Saudis against Yemen. It's certainly not in the American interest to support a fundamentalist Sunni country that provided most of the 9/11 hijackers against the Houthis in Yemen - especially since not one of these guys could tell you who the Houthis are.