And as we remember the gift of salvation on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, let us be so bold to ask the same,” Cruz said in a statement on Good Friday. Yet, on Easter Sunday, Cruz was singing a different tune, doubling down on his desire to “carpet bomb” the Middle East. Fox’s Shannon Bream played a clip of former Sec. Hillary Clinton criticizing Cruz for his bomb-everyone-ask-questions-later foreign policy strategy, saying that the plan shows Cruz would be in over his head. Bream cited a CNN poll out earlier in March showing Cruz ranking fourth when it comes to America’s confidence in leadership on foreign policy. “So, as a first-term senator, as the secretary suggested, are you in over your head on foreign policy?” she asked. Cruz’s first tactic was to blame the Obama administration, and Clinton along with it, claiming the United States has abandoned its allies. “This has been the most anti-Israel administration we have ever seen. And we have shown weakness and appeasement to our enemies,” Cruz said. He then attacked President Obama for visiting Cuba and working to lift the embargo on the country before criticizing the current anti-ISIS strategy.
One of the truisms of any Presidential campaign is that it’s far easier to run for President than it is to actually BE President. Criticizing decisions made by a President is something that should be done with the understanding that anyone can second-guess; it’s much tougher being the one making what in some cases are life-and-death decision. Not that this stops Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Mordor)…who believes that The Black Guy in the White House © has modeled nothing but weakness, indecisiveness, and appeasement during his two terms in office.
Of course, Sen. Cruz is just arrogant and self-righteous enough to know that he’d be SO much better, SO much more decisive, and SO much more Presidential if he was the one sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office. Because God, after all, is on his side.
The problem, of course, is that Sen. Cruz lives in a world where everything is colored in stark shades of black and white. Virtually every foreign policy questions can be broken down into a discussion of “Good” vs. “Evil.” There are no grey areas, merely matters requiring a steady hand and a willingness to make the tough decisions.
And carpet bomb the evildoers back into the Stone Age.
“But we need a president who will bring the full force and fury of the United States of America to defeating ISIS,” Cruz continued. “Shannon, I’ll tell you, if I’m president, we will utterly and completely destroy ISIS. We will carpet bomb them into oblivion, using overwhelming airpower. We will arm the Kurds on the ground. We will use our forces to defeat them and we won’t put our forces in combat with the rules of engagement that Obama is so fond of that tie their arms behind their back that make it impossible for them to fight and win. That is wrong and that is immoral.
“If and when we use military force, we will use it to win, to defeat our enemies with overwhelming force and then we’ll get the heck out. We won’t engage in nation-building, but rather, we’ll keep America safe,” Cruz concluded.
Sen. Cruz is a first-term Senator with a history as a reasonably skilled and able attorney…but who appears to have zero knowledge about foreign policy and even less experience. For him to criticize a sitting President who’s been making tough calls for seven-plus years is ludicrous. Being President isn’t easy; none of us who haven’t been in that position can possibly hope to understand what sort of burden that must be. Yet Sen. Cruz is just arrogant enough to believe the he knows- far more so than The Black Guy in the White House ©- exactly what needs to be done.
He’d carpet bomb the evildoers back into the Stone Age.
The Senator’s language and tone betray a rookie who’d have to learn on the job like any other President, and would undoubtedly be tested early and often. Like most any endeavor, talking about it is far different than actually doing it and being held responsible for the consequences.
Talking about “carpet bombing” may work when he’s appealing to his base of knuckle-dragging, hate-driven “Christians,” but I suspect he’d learn quickly that bombing a problem doesn’t magically make it disappear. Indeed, in most cases it will only exacerbate an already intractable conundrum.
If the Middle East was so easily “solved,” don’t you think a President would have done it by now? If defeating terrorism was something requiring only a simple and direct solution, someone would most certainly have beaten the junior Senator from Texas to the punch.
When you’re just arrogant enough to believe that you have answers to questions that Presidents have been trying to answer for years, you’re not only setting yourself up for a fall- you’re putting America at risk.
Ted Cruz is a shot in the dark America can’t afford to take. We deserve better.
