[This is the full text of Tim Pawlenty's address today, 6/28, to the Council on Foreign Relation on American policy towards the Middle East. ]

I want to speak plainly this morning about the opportunities and the dangers we face today in the Middle East.  The revolutions now roiling that region offer the promise of a more democratic, more open, and a more prosperous Arab world.  From Morocco to the Arabian Gulf, the escape from the dead hand of oppression is now a real possibility.   

Now is not the time to retreat from freedom's rise....

[For example] it is not wrong for Republicans to question the conduct of President Obama's military leadership in Libya. There is much to question.  And it is not wrong for Republicans to debate the timing of our military drawdown in Afghanistan- though my belief is that General Petraeus' voice ought to carry the most weight on that question.   

What is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world.  History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we'll save in a budget line item.

America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal.  It does not need a second one.

That the Washington Post is traitorously on the side of the Jihadi terrorists and against America was further demonstrated on November 2^nd when the paper ran the front page headline story, CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons.

To disclose supremely classified information that the CIA operates a number of prisons for Jihadis in Eastern Europe is an unbelievable compromise of national security. The WaPo reporter who wrote the story, Dana Priest, should go to jail for treason, along with the WaPo editors who approved it.

The CIA has requested a formal Justice Department inquiry into the source of the classified information to the press. The House Intelligence Committee has announced it will hold hearings to investigate the leak. This is infinitely more serious than the Plamegate farce.

Note, however, that the Senate will not, as of yet, hold hearings. That’s because the leak to the WaPo has been traced to.....

As Governor, I fought the Obama Administration's plans to cut funds for missile defense in Alaska. So imagine how appalled and surprised I was to read this article by former Clinton CIA Director James Woolsey, appropriately titled "Giving Away the Farm," concerning President Obama's latest bizarre actions relating to missile defense. 

President Obama wants to give Russia our missile defense secrets because he believes that we can buy their friendship and cooperation with this taxpayer-funded gift.  But giving military secrets and technologies to a rival or competitor like Russia is just plain dumb.  

You can't buy off Russia.  And giving them advanced military technology will not create stability.  What happens if Russia gives this technology (or sells it!) to other countries like Iran or China?   After all, as Woolsey points out, Russia helped Iran with its missile and nuclear programs.

Why is it that President Obama seems to work so hard to give things to our enemies, while at the same time asking friends and allies like Israel to make sacrifices?

Our immediate human ancestor, Homo Ergaster, emerged 1.7 million years ago.  The males of Ergaster's ancestors, Australopithicus and Habilis, were twice as large as the females - meaning they were polygamous.  In species where males have a lot of competition for access to mates, the bigger the male is the greater his selective advantage.  The more sex he has with as many females as he can, the more his genes get replicated.

This changes with Ergaster.  The males became 50% bigger than their ancestors, while the females became 70% bigger.  This reduction of dimorphism signals that the greatest revolution in human society was occurring:  pair-bonding.  One man mating with one woman, the nuclear family as the foundation of a human community.

"Pair-bonding" is what paleontologists call it.  We call it marriage.  Marriage - monogamous pair-bonding for mutual support and to raise children (human infants are far more helpless than those of other primates - this again starts with Ergaster) - is what made us human.  Marriage is the missing link.