Better in their words…

Oh, my! Did he really say that?!
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Tuesday’s assaults on the U.S. Embassies in Benghazi and Cairo have injected foreign policy into the Presidential campaign, but suddenly the parsons of the press corps are offended by the debate. They’re upset that Mitt Romney had the gall to criticize the State Department for a statement that the White House itself disavowed.

We’re referring to the statement issued Tuesday under the headline “U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement.” The statement came in response to Muslim protests against a 13-minute anti-Islamic video making the rounds on YouTube.

In response to anger in Egypt at the video, the Embassy in Cairo issued its statement saying that “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” It added that, “Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

One problem is that the statement came not long before Egyptian protestors stormed the Embassy and some of them made it over a wall and into the compound. An Embassy Twitter post after the assault said its earlier statement “still stands.”

Mr. Romney reacted late Tuesday with his own statement: “I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” He followed Wednesday with a press conference reinforcing his criticisms of the Administration’s “mixed signals” on “our values.”

The Obama Presidential campaign jumped on the remarks Wednesday as inappropriate, yet a “senior Administration official” had told the website Politico later on Tuesday night that “The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government.” So the White House can walk away from its own diplomats, but Mr. Romney can’t criticize them?

Whatever the timing of the Cairo Embassy’s statements, Mr. Romney is right that a U.S. Embassy ought to ignore YouTube videos produced by obscure cranks. As Tuesday’s events showed, pandering to Islamists who would use the video to inflame anti-American sentiment isn’t going to stop the protests. The video “Innocence of Muslims” is inflammatory and its producer is a fool, but in the U.S. we don’t censor fools.

The broader point is that the attacks on the embassies do raise questions about how America has fared in the world in the last four years.  Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Romney has supported the necessity of America’s global leadership, sometimes against the wishes of Republican voters. His comments this week are consistent with that worldview, which is also consistent with that of every recent conservative President.

His political faux pas was to offend a pundit class that wants to cede the foreign policy debate to Mr. Obama without thinking seriously about the trouble for America that is building in the world.

A version of this article appeared September 13, 2012, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Romney Offends the Pundits.

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