Republican presidential candidates urged greater confrontation with terrorists and a clampdown on immigration, while slamming President Barack Obama after Friday evening’s terror assaults in Paris.
“Boots on the ground would be important, because throughout that whole Middle Eastern region we have been calling for a coalition of the people who have a vested interest,” Ben Carson, by some measures the Republicans’ current 2016 front-runner, told reporters in Florida on Friday night.
Along with a number of his Republican presidential rivals, Carson also said the U.S. should not accept refugees from the Middle East, according to The Washington Post. Many of those refugees are fleeing the Islamic State terrorist group, particularly in Syria, but opponents of accepting them say terrorists may have infiltrated those trying to escape the violence.
Republican candidates were also quick to condemn Obama’s approach to fighting terrorism, and they pounced on comments in an interview due to air in full on Sunday citing “some progress” in fighting Islamic State.
In the interview taped Thursday for ABC News’ “This Week,” portions of which aired Friday morning, Obama said the U.S. has “contained” the Islamic State from making territorial gains in Syria and Iraq.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, in a post on his website, called for revoking “any agreement with Iran regarding their nuclear capacity.” Iran’s Shia leadership has battled the Sunni Islamic State, but, Huckabee said, “radical Islamists, whether Sunni or Shia, are a clear and present danger to civilization.”
In two tweets, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said the U.S. “must increase our efforts at home and abroad to improve our defenses, destroy terrorist networks and deprive them of the space from which to operate.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has cautioned his fellow Republicans against harsh rhetoric toward immigrants, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt he was “not surprised” by Friday night’s attacks. “This is an organized effort to destroy Western civilization,” Bush said. But rather than calling for tighter immigration laws, he urged the U.S. to fortify alliances, strengthen links with European intelligence, and “engage in the Middle East to take out (Islamic State).”
Speaking Saturday, Carly Fiorina planned to say she was “mostly … angry” at Obama and Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state until 2013 and now the Democratic presidential front-runner.
“I am angry that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared victory in Iraq in 2011, abandoned all our hard-won gains for political expediency and contrary to the advice of our generals, thus leaving vast swaths of territory and too much weaponry to be gobbled up by (Islamic State),” the former Hewlett-Packard CEO said in an advance text of a speech at the Florida Sunshine Summit gathering of Republicans.
