Let’s give credit where it is due; this president is a uniter, not a divider. Why, just look at Capitol Hill…
Rep. Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, this morning:
“I said for some time that ISIS is a national security threat to the United States and to our allies and we need to have a comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS. I’m not confident that we have right that right now… I last served in Iraq during the Surge, and we actually got Iraq to a relatively stable place but then we pulled out. We pulled those political advisors out of the ministries, out of the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Iraqi government went off the rails, so much so that its own army didn’t even trust it… I was just concerned that we’re not doing more. I don’t think we have this long-term strategy.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, this morning:
“I have never been more concerned. I read the intelligence faithfully. ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding. They’ve just put out a video saying it is their intent to attack this country. And I think we have to be prepared… There’s only one way we are going to diminish them and that is by taking them out, because they are growing. They are in more than a dozen countries now. They are sophisticated. They have apps to communicate on that cannot be pierced, even with a court order. So they have a kind of secret way of being able to conduct operations and operational planning. So we should take this very, very seriously.”
Here’s Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, last night:
“[The White House] does have a strategy to try to squeeze ISIS territorially, to squeeze its finances, to go after it’s a social media campaign. But I am concerned, Chris, that the timetable is too long, that Isis will be allowed to maintain its space in Iraq and Syria from which it can plan and plot and resource attacks against a Europe and the United States. So I think we need to do something to change the dynamic on the ground.. One of things I would like to see the administration re-examined and that is the possibility of establishing a buffer zone or safe zone to test the Turks who have been advocating this whether they’re willing to put Turkish troops within that zone across the Syrian border to protect the zone if we protect it from the air that kind of a partnership with turkey in the Gulf countries may be enough to start to change the dynamic on the ground but something has to shrink Isis space more quickly than we’ve been able to do or where a significant risk of attacks like the ones we saw in Paris.”
So President Obama is indeed uniting Republicans and Democrats… in agreement that the administration’s current approach to ISIS isn’t working and is insufficient.