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Prospective Republican candidates for president used Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday night describing his new Middle East policy as an opportunity to criticize his old one – and to lay out how they would take a different approach.
There was little room for sharp disagreement. Polling this week found that 71% of the American public supports air strikes on Iraq, and the Republicans who replied to Obama all said they were behind the new campaign.
The possible members of the 2016 presidential field did try, however, to spell out differences with a president whose popularity is at an all-time low. Here’s a roundup of what they said (election day 2016 is two years and two months away):
Senator Marco Rubio
Rubio, who has positioned himself as a foreign policy specialist and who sits on the Senate foreign relations and intelligence committees, appeared on CNN Thursday morning and welcomed what he said was the president’s change of heart about confronting Isis.
“Generally we’re in a much better place with the president than we were previous to this speech, a week ago, a month ago. I mean he’s come a long way. He called Isis a JV team a few weeks ago, now he’s acknowledged that they’re a serious threat, and that’s good. […]
“I do have a couple of concerns with the speech last night. First, I think it was a mistake to equate this conflict with what we’ve done in Yemen and Somalia. We’ve certainly had success in those places but those remain very unstable and dangerous places and real threats to our national security. I also think that [Isis] poses a risk that is very different from the risks posed by terrorists in those two countries. Isis is a terrorist group, but it also has insurgents elements to it … They pose a much different risk.
“And here’s my last concern. What I didn’t hear the president say last night is that ‘We’re going defeat them no matter what it takes,’ and that’s important. … But what if that doesn’t work? Does that then mean that Isis gets to stay … to continue to expand? It was important for the president to say that ‘No matter what it takes … ultimately we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.’”
Senator Rand Paul
Paul, a sharp critic of the former administration’s war in Iraq and a skeptic of any American intervention, appeared on Fox News directly following the president’s speech Wednesday and praised Obama for saying Isis was not an “Islamic” group.
Paul said he supported “whatever it takes to take out Isis”. He tied the current “disaster” in the region to what he said was a US policy of toppling secular dictators. Paul said in part:
“I think that there was one important point that he was making, about [Isis] not being Islamic or a true form of Islam. Ultimately, civilized Islam will have to step up. We need to do everything we can to protect ourselves – I’m all in for saying we have to combat Isis, but … ultimately we do need … the long-term victory is going to require allies who are part of the civilized Islamic world, which is the majority of the Islamic world, but they have to step up. Because frankly, they’ve been allowing too much of this to go on.”
The record of Obama’s foreign policy failure, Paul said, is written across the region:
“Libya is a disaster, Libya is a jihadist wonderland. The jihadists are swimming in the embassy swimming pool in Libya. Syria is a disaster, it’s chaotic. Iraq is a disaster, and Iraq is chaotic.
“But the one thing we need to remember about all of this, while I do support doing whatever it takes to take out Isis, we need to remember how we got here. And the reason we got here is because we took it upon ourselves to topple secular dictators who were the enemy of radical Islam.”
Paul named Assad, Gaddafi, Hussein and Mubarak.
Senator Ted Cruz
Cruz took the Isis debate in a novel direction, calling for tighter border security to combat the perceived threat to the United States. In a piece on CNN’s website, Cruz also warned about potential “impractical contingencies” in the president’s policy, which he said included building an international coalition to support the war effort. Cruz’s piece said in part:
“It is deeply concerning that it has taken President Barack Obama so long to develop any kind of strategy to address these increasingly powerful terrorists who have now gruesomely killed two American journalists before the world stage.
“On Wednesday evening, the president will finally share with the American people his ‘game plan’, as he calls it, to combat Isis. It is my hope that he will propose a clear plan, consistent with the constitution, to keep Americans safe, and that it is not laden with impractical contingencies, such as resolving the Syrian civil war, reaching political reconciliation in Iraq or achieving ‘consensus’ in the international community.”
Cruz went on to call for more secure borders, stripping Isis fighters of American citizenship and a more robust military response.
Governor Chris Christie
Mum. On a campaign-like swing on the Jersey Shore over Labor Day weekend, Christie latched onto the president’s comment days earlier that the administration did not have a “strategy” for dealing with Isis.
“It’s scary to hear the president say that,” Christie said. But he declined to lay out what his own strategy would be. “The Isis situation is one that deserves a really detailed answer, which I’m not going to give you while walking down the boardwalk and taking selfies,” Christie said.
Also mum as yet: governors Bobby Jindal, former governors Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, and congressman Paul Ryan.
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