Here's Mitt Romney a few short months ago telling donors all about how the only real strategy in the Middle East is...hope.

Via Mother Jones:

Romney was indicating he did not believe in the peace process and, as president, would aim to postpone significant action: "[S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it."

Contrast that view to the one in his big foreign policy speech today, where he not only advocated starting what sounds like World War III, but also taking a proactive role in the Israel-Palestinian peace process:

I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy. We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut, when we have no trade agenda to speak of, and the perception of our strategy is not one of partnership, but of passivity.

As usual, what he says in public and what he says in private are two entirely different things. About the only thing you can count on from Romney is that he'll say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear.