The terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 120 people have unleashed a torrent of reckless rhetoric from politicians and pundits against President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.
The over-the-top rhetorical onslaught has not brought more understanding or a better strategy in combating terrorism or extremist groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is typical of the politicians using the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris to launch a partisan attack.
Santorum went so far as to blame the President for the bombing and firearm attacks that ISIS said its members carried out.
“This President doesn’t plan. … This President has completely abandoned ship,” the Republican presidential hopeful told reporters at the Sunshine Summit in Florida.
Santorum said Obama “has no intention of winning” the fight against ISIS.
In an act of self-importance, Santorum, who is lagging at the bottom of the GOP presidential field, called himself one of ISIS’ biggest threats in the race and he noted the group listed him as an enemy.
“No other presidential candidate has been in ISIS magazine — they know who I am and I know who they are,” he said.
Jeb Bush said Obama lacked not the resources but “the will” to defeat ISIL, and called his policy “incremental, just kind of running out the clock so the next president has to deal with this.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) charged that Obama was doing “the bare minimum” to fight the radical group, calling for “high-profile, humiliating defeats” to demoralize its followers.
Obama conceded that the Paris attacks were a “terrible and sickening setback” in the fight against the ISIS, but he is right to dismiss critics who have called for the U.S. to change or expand its military campaign against the extremists.
“The strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work,” Obama said during a news conference at the close of the G-20 summit of world leaders. “It’s going to take time.”
Obama said the U.S. would intensify its current campaign of airstrikes as well as arming and training moderate forces. He also called on other nations to step up their involvement in the fight against ISIS.
But some Republican presidential candidates and commentators have called for sending U.S. forces into Syria without explaining what this would mean, including how many soldiers to dispatch and how long would they stay.
Those who call for sending U.S. ground troops into the region should be honest with the American public by acknowledging this would not work unless the U.S. was committed to being a permanent occupying force in the region. Even then — as seen with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the outcome is unpredictable.
Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune.
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