Tim Pawlenty stressed the importance of continued involvement in the Middle East while addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday, condemning President Obama for his views on foreign policy while indirectly criticizing fellow Republican presidential hopefuls.
The former Minnesota governor, who opposes Obama’s Afghanistan withdrawal plan, believes the U.S. should seize the opportunity to expand democracy and remove tyrants abroad.
“The revolutions now roiling that region offer the promise of a more democratic, more open, and a more prosperous Arab world,” he said, adding that terrorists “respect and respond” to strength in the forms of military intervention and diplomatic pressure. “Now is not the time to retreat from freedom’s rise.”
Pawlenty continued to address the issue by stating that Afghanistan’s security forces must be bolstered before U.S. troops can come home.
“[Obama] has been timid, slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles,” he said of the president’s handling of foreign policy.
When it comes to his Republican colleagues, Pawlenty decried their isolationist sentiments and accused them of backing away from the challenges presented by the War on Terror.
“What is wrong is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world,” he said. “America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal. It does not need a second one.”