Cruz: Obama ISIS Strategy 'Driven by Political Operatives'

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized President Barack Obama’s ISIS policy for being “driven by political operatives” on Wednesday’s “The Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.

“Unfortunately, what we have seen in six years of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy has been a foreign policy that seems to focus on photo-ops, on press releases, but not on concrete military objectives that are tied to our national security. Our objective here should be to take ISIS out, but instead, this seems to be a campaign driven by political operatives and political mandates in the white house rather than clear military objectives,” he said.

Cruz added, “A month ago President Obama analogized his strategy to what we’ve pursued in Somalia and Yemen, two countries where we’ve had a failed strategy that isn’t working, and sadly it continues to be of that piece. A couple weeks ago, the Senate Armed Services Committee had a hearing where I asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, I said ‘if the objective were to destroy ISIS within 90 days, what would be required militarily to do that?’ He said it’s impossible to do. I said, ‘okay, if that timeframe is not reasonable, then you tell me in your military judgment what would be required to destroy, not to weaken and contain ISIS, but to destroy them?’ And his response sadly reflected the approach of the Obama White House. He said it cannot be accomplished militarily. Instead, the answer is we have to change the conditions on the ground so people are not receptive to radicalism. That is completely missing the objective of protecting this country from violent terrorists who want to kill us.”

He also spoke on the Ebola crisis gripping West Africa, stating “the first line of defense should be to prevent that terrible virus from coming here…our priority should be protecting the American people and preventing Ebola from coming here.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett