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An American ambassador murdered. A consulate ransacked. Multiple embassies under siege. A U.S. school looted. Protests in “liberated” Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans again wondering: Why do they hate us? Yet some Washington policy makers never learn. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the latest attacks on Americans resulted from a lack of U.S. “leadership.” GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan blamed administration weakness and Pentagon spending cuts. The cause, according to the last Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, was President Obama’s “weakness” and “feckless foreign policy,” most notably Washington’s failure to impose its will on the Muslim world—by intervening in Syria,...