Huffington Post
May 5, 2011
WASHINGTON -- With the death of Osama bin Laden dominating the news cycle and captivating the public this week, the five Republican presidential hopefuls who showed in South Carolina Thursday for the Fox News debate were asked to explain their position on the war in Afghanistan.
Fox News host Brett Baier brought up the issue in one of the first questions of the night, asking former senator Rick Santorum about his claim that President Obama has made America less safe.
"When it comes to going after terrorists, for example, drone attacks in Pakistan have more than tripled under President Obama. He just sent 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan last year, and he just authorized, as we talked about, this mission to kill bin Laden. How much more aggressive could he be?" asked Baier.
Santorum replied that when Obama has done well on foreign policy, it's been because he has continued President George W. Bush's policies, such as "keeping Gitmo open" and "trying to win in Afghanistan." In recent days, many Republicans have rushed to embrace the former president, a man barely mentioned during the last election cycle.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), however, received the first applause of the night when he forcefully called for withdrawal:
[Bin Laden] wasn't caught in Afghanistan. Nation-building in Afghanistan and telling those people how to live and getting involved in running their country hardly had anything to do with finding the information where he was being held in a country that we give billions of dollars of foreign aid to, at the same time we are bombing that country. So it's the policy that is at fault. Not having the troops in Afghanistan wouldn't have hurt. We went to Afghanistan to get him, and he hasn't been there. Now that he's killed, boy, it is a wonderful time for this country now to reassess it, get the troops out of Afghanistan and end that war that hasn't helped us and hasn't helped anybody in the Middle East.Read the entire article
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