Neither Major Party Candidate is "Anti-War" ...

... but I think there's a reasonable prospect that Mitt Romney would be the less objectively "pro-war" president.

Before going any further, let me make one thing perfectly clear: This is not an endorsement. I do not vote. I do not recommend voting. If I voted or recommended voting, I would not vote, nor would I recommend voting, Republican or Democrat or for Romney or Obama.

BUT! If there is a real foreign policy difference between the two candidates -- a difference not made apparent in the public debates, from which Romney seems just as dedicated to the idea of serving Obama's second term as Obama is to serving George W. Bush's fourth term -- I think that Romney may actually be the relative dove to Obama's relative hawk.

For one thing, Romney's math doesn't add up. He can't get the tax cuts he wants and the spending increases he wants and move toward the balanced budget he claims to want. So he's lying about something. The something he's lying about may be his intentions in foreign policy and his accompanying intention to increase "defense" spending by 18% over the next five years rather than the 10% Obama is campaigning on.

He's got an easy out on that, if he should get into office. As Obama never tires of pointing out, the defense spending he's campaigning for is spending the military isn't asking for. So once inaugurated, Romney could come out with "I sat down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and my new Secretary of Defense, and they convinced me we can do this cheaper than I thought we could."

Secondly, to the extent that US foreign policy is often yoked to the demands of Israel, I think it's quite possible that Romney may be less inclined in that direction than Obama, probably the most slavishly "pro-Israel" president since Harry Truman.

Romney is not an evangelical Protestant Christian. He's not a "dispensationalist" who believes that biblical prophecy refers to the modern re-institution of Israel as a key event which the devout must support.

Romney is a Mormon. The modern, biblically predicted re-institution of Israel is, according to his religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Jerusalem which constitutes the capital of that re-instituted Israel, where the Lord's temple will be re-built and to which Jesus will one day return, is not located in Palestine. It's located in Independence, Missouri.

That's not to say that Romney may not be "pro-Israel." He's still a politician and subject to the usual lobbying and so forth. But at least we know that deep down in his heart he does not believe that the matter of Israel is a setup for the final battle between good and evil.

OK, I guess we don't really know that. His actual belief in Mormonism may be as shallow as his other stated beliefs, and depending on that shallowness of belief to also extend to "defense" spending is far from a sure thing. Still, it's not obvious to me that Romney will necessarily be even more insanely belligerent, warlike, murderous and terroristic than Obama, if for no other reason than that that is nearly impossible to imagine.