If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, as the saying goes. So it is not surprising that Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and others on the right wing have made the Paris attacks into an immigration issue. It is all they know, and they will continue to bang the anti-immigrant drum until their last gasp on the presidential trail.
Trump knows very little about foreign policy, but he knows a whole lot about xenophobia. He wants not only to halt the flow of Syrian refugees (who fled for their lives from jihadists, just as Parisians did on Friday), but now he also says we should consider closing mosques. His ignorance of foreign policy is dwarfed by his ignorance of the Constitution.
Cruz is only marginally better. As Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pointed out on Monday, "At least two ... colleagues in the Senate aspiring to the presidency, Senator Cruz in particular, have voted to weaken the U.S. intelligence programs just in the last month and a half. And the weakening of our intelligence gathering capabilities leaves America vulnerable. And that is exactly what's happened."
Moreover, Cruz's approach to jihadist terror has been incoherent. He denounces the president for refusing to admit we are at war with Islamic fundamentalists but dismisses the war in Syria, which houses the Islamic State, as a "civil war." He rages at the Obama administration for lacking a strategy but refuses to acknowledge a larger U.S. contingent is required.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hit the nail on the head in an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Monday evening:
"What we need to do is to fully arm, with every capability they need, our intelligence officers and our law enforcement officers to be able to catch folks who are planning and plotting attacks against the American public before they happen. It is because of the leadership that was provided by President George W. Bush, by Attorney General John Ashcroft, by Director [Robert] Mueller at the FBI, and by the U.S. attorneys across this country and the brave agents across this country for those various agencies that were able to make sure that we didn't have that happen again."
Jeb Bush has sounded the call for restoring the metadata program, using massive force against the Islamic State in concert with our allies and setting up a no-fly zone. He may not have a snappy comeback to Rubio in a debate, but he has taken the time to understand our national security threats.
Christie, Rubio and Bush are all advancing a forceful, coherent plan for waging war against our deadly enemies. Their consistency on the issues allows them to speak confidently rather than toss shiny objects in the air, hoping the media and voters forget their well-documented inanities. The anti-refugee zealots are obsessing and distracting attention from the core mission: Defeating the Islamic State and foiling plots to kill us.
Editorial on 11/18/2015