I told my daughter that terrorists would love to attack Washington, but we, unlike the French, are an ocean away from Syria, that lots of smart people are working very hard to stop the terrorists, and that these terrorists are not very sophisticated.
As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.
Forgiveness, dialogue, reconciliation - these are the words of peace, in beloved Syria, in the Middle East, in all the world.
If you want prisoners to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.
It cannot be an American fight. And I think what the president [Barack Obama] has consistently said - which I agree with - is that we will support those who take the fight to ISIS. That is why we have troops in Iraq that are helping to train and build back up the Iraqi military, why we have special operators in Syria working with the Kurds and Arabs, so that we can be supportive.
One great lesson from history we need to keep on re-learning. It is that sometimes your adversaries tell you exactly what they're going to do. How many times did [Osama] bin Laden say prior to 9/11 that he was coming after the U.S.? ISIS made clear that when they established their caliphate in Iraq and Syria, they were coming after the United States too.
I can tell you who's planning terroris attacks. The leaders of ISIL. And I can tell you where they're at. They're in Raqqa, Syria. So for God's sakes, Mr. President Barack Obama , change your strategy. Come up with a ground force to go in and destroy the caliphate before we get hit here at home. That would be my advice to you.
ISIL is not the JV team. I cannot stress enough that there's a terrorist army in Syria and Iraq that wants to attack the homeland and we're not doing anything about it. So how do you defeat the ideology? Build up others? You reject Rand Paul.
Bashar Assad has been so brutal toward the Sunni within Syria that he created the space that led to the people of Syria themselves to stand up and try to overthrow him. That led to the chaos which allowed ISIS to come in and take advantage of that situation and grow more powerful.
There are still people - the majority on the stage, they want to topple [Bashar] Assad. And then there will be chaos, and I think ISIS will then be in charge of Syria.
As far as the Internet is concerned, we're not talking about closing the Internet. I'm talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is, spotting it.
Continuous wars - which we have now had since 2001 - starting with Afghanistan, continuing on to Iraq. And even since Iraq, it's been more or less continuous. The appalling war in Libya, which has wrecked that country and wrecked that part of the world, and which isn't over by any means. The indirect Western intervention in Syria, which has created new monsters. These are policies, which if carried out by any individual government, would be considered extremist. Now, they're being carried out collectively by the United States, backed by some of the countries of the European Union.
Everywhere the Salafi are pushing by saying, "We are the guardian, and we are resisting any kind of relationship to the West or provocation coming from the West." And internally, it's unsettling the whole situation. Now in Tunisian, in Libya, in Syria, in Egypt, the clash between the literalists and - the Islamists or the reformists is something which is going to be part of what we have to deal with as to the future of America.
I talk with countries, whether it's the Arab states or in the Middle East, and they talk about how they're glad to see us fighting against Iran. I talk with different countries in reference to Syria, and we talk about how we can get the Iranian influence out. We're talking about North Korea and what we need to do and the pressure we need to put on China. They're happy that we're finally beating up on Russia for what they've done in the Ukraine.
Assad is always a priority. That is not an issue. He is a war crime. He has done terrible things to his own people. He has used chemical weapons on his own people. He continues to be a hindrance to peace in Syria. And that is something the Trump administration strongly believes.
Assad is not going away, but we're not going to stop beating up on him. We're not going to stop saying that the way he treats the people in Syria is wrong, that he has actually killed his own people and America will never stand for that.
Currently, the United States has troops in dozens of countries and is actively fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (with the occasional drone strike in Pakistan). In addition, the United States is pledged to defend 28 countries in NATO. It is unwise to expand the monetary and military obligations of the United States given the burden of our $20 trillion debt.
We understand that ISIS is a group that's growing in its governance of territory. It's not just Iraq and Syria. They are now a predominant group in Libya. They are beginning to pop up in Afghanistan. They are increasingly involved now in attacks in Yemen. They have Jordan in their sights. This group needs to be confronted with serious proposals.
When you look at belief in such things - as do you go to heaven, is there a devil - we have more in common with (Muslin countries) Turkey and Iran and Syria than we do with European nations and Canada and nations that, yes, I would consider more enlightened that us.
The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq.
Turkey in general became too involved with what is happening in Egypt and in Syria. Some politicians with neo-Ottoman dreams developed this idea of being a major player in the Middle East, which hasn't gone as expected.
Chris Christie who proposes accepting Syrian refugee orphans under the age of 5 because they may not be vetted well enough. You can`t trust them. The 5-year-olds might it be terrorists. After all, they`re from Syria.
I think the blood is spilling in Syria and it's mostly Muslims.
The source of the problem is in Syria. Raqqa is the headquarters of ISIL, which is a lethal terrorist organization, now army. If you don't go after them over there, they're going to hit us over here, and there's no substitute for that in my view.
As far as Paris goes, we don't know for sure yet how these guys communicate among themselves and how they communicated back to the ISIS leadership in Iraq and Syria, but I'm fairly confident we're going to learn they used these encrypted communication applications that have commercial encryption and are extremely difficult for companies to break - and which the companies have made the decision not to produce a key for.
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