When pressed to give examples of “decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal” to which the administration and its party are supposedly devoted, here were the examples that Pawlenty could give during his Q&A session yesterday (questions begin at around minute 27): 1) Obama’s lack of rhetorical support for the Green movement*; 2) Obama’s decision to withdraw some of the soldiers he sent to Afghanistan earlier than Petraeus recommended; 3) Obama’s decision to send an ambassador to Damascus, and his reluctance to criticize Assad’s crackdown. That’s the best he could do. On the first and third charges regarding criticism of other regimes, Pawlenty is faulting Obama for being insufficiently rhetorically confrontational, whereas he would have shown “moral clarity” by being tougher rhetorically. In other words, these are largely complaints about sending or failing to send messages publicly.

It makes no sense to say that sending an ambassador and resuming relations with another state is an example of “decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal.” As far as American “leadership” is concerned, re-establishing full diplomatic relations with a state is either a neutral move or an example of wielding U.S. influence. It may or may not be a good decision to resume relations with a given state at a particular time, but it has absolutely nothing to do with these three things. One of the oddest rhetorical tricks that hawks use is their claim that advocacy for greater diplomatic engagement with former pariah states is proof of a desire to manage declining power and withdrawal from the world. They seem unable to grasp that engaging in diplomacy is an exercise of power, or that diplomacy is one instrument among many for projecting power. It is a kind of action. It isn’t a refusal to act. In the same breath that they damn skeptics for “isolationism,” they mock them for their international engagement. Clearly, they are confused people.

On the question of Obama’s decision on troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, Pawlenty might seem to be on firmer ground, since he is at least referring to a withdrawal of some soldiers from overseas. In fact, what he is complaining about here is not an embrace of “decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal” as such, but Obama’s decision to overrule the judgment of a particular general and his insistence on setting an earlier deadline for that withdrawal that Pawlenty and others consider to be too early and motivated by domestic politics**. The issue here isn’t whether the decision that Obama made on troop levels and timetables was right or not, but that Pawlenty is trying to use it support a much broader critique of Obama’s foreign policy that simply doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Pawlenty has identified things he considers to be mistakes, and then cobbles them together to claim that they represent something that they don’t. Most of these things aren’t obviously mistakes, nor is it clear that Pawlenty’s “moral clarity” and deference to Petraeus would produce more desirable outcomes.

* I have addressed why this is a ridiculous complaint here.

** The Iraq “surge” decision and the temporary nature of the “surge” were both partly motivated by domestic politics, and it is wrong to believe that domestic political factors don’t have some influence on all such decisions. Damning withdrawal announcements as politically expedient is a roundabout way of acknowledging that the war in question is very unpopular and there is no public consensus behind it any longer.

Update: Alex Massie has more on Pawlenty’s speech.