LIMA — In the eyes of U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green, President Barack Obama and his cabinet have made several missteps when it comes to foreign policy and national security.
When it comes to the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, Latta has seen what he believes to be several lapses in judgment by the current administration.
“You’ve got Benghazi and the four Americans killed there,” he said during a visit to The Lima News. “Then you’ve the president touting what was going on in Yemen, and now you’ve got Al Qaeda and all those groups fighting there. Then in Syria, [President Bashar al-Assad] was using chemical weapons against his own people who were fighting against him, and the president drew those red lines in the sand, and nothing ever happened with them. Now you’ve got ISIS, or ISIL, in Syria and Iraq, and they want to establish a country to encompass Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and even a little bit of Turkey.”
Dealing with the Islamic State has been a major failure of this administration, according to Latta.
“The president said that ISIS was a ‘JV team,’” he said. “Now they are a major threat. Twelve hours before the Paris attacks, he said that ISIS was contained.”
Taken together with missile tests in Iran, the notion of taking in Syrian refugees that the FBI has set cannot be completely vetted, and the recent attack in San Bernadino, Latta believes that a lack of foreign policy leadership has left Americans feeling less secure.
“The president has let events shape him instead of him shaping events,” he said.
Latta said that early this year, Congress will be looking at how to address these issues in the Middle East, including the Islamic State.
“We can’t just contain it, but we have to destroy it,” he said. “One thing I can’t believe we haven’t been hitting on until recently is that ISIS is sustaining itself by selling oil, 1 [million] to 3 million barrels a day, and we haven’t been striking the trucks. We need to shut off their money supply.”
Latta would also like to see a greater coalition with allies in the region, but he does not see that happening with the current president.
“The president believes that the biggest threat today is global warming,” he said. “We need to understand that there is a war going on and treat it as such. We can’t keep cutting our military.”
Latta also referenced the push to strengthen security around visa waivers so terrorists do not have a way into the country from not just the Middle East, but also Europe or other parts of North America.
“We need to know who’s coming in here,” he said. “I think a lot of people wouldn’t be sleeping at night if they knew what we haven’t been doing.”
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