Ben Carson is calling for the United States to block Middle East refugees from coming to the United States in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris Friday – and urged Congress to take the lead.
At a Republican Party conference in Orlando, Fla., the GOP presidential candidate – the last of seven contenders speaking at the "Sunshine Summit" – said the terror strikes should remind Americans "that there are those out there who have a thirst for innocent blood in an attempt to spread their philosophy and their will across this globe,"
the Washington Post reports.
"Congress does have a role to play here, and it’s not just being the peanut gallery," Carson said.
"If we’re going to be bringing 200,000 people over here from that region — if I were one of the leaders of the global jihadist movement and I didn’t infiltrate that group of people with my people, that would be almost malpractice."
He also faulted the Obama administration for "not having the kind of vision that would allow you to recognize that once you’ve gotten a place like Iraq under control you don’t withdraw, which leaves an incredible vacuum and allows for the development of things like ISIS."
Asked if he'd be able to forcefully respond to terror attacks in America should he be elected president, Carson said he'd be "working with our allies using every resource known to man in terms of economic resources, in terms of covert resources, overt resources, military resources, things that they don’t know about — resources," the Post reports.
"In an attempt not to contain them but to eliminate them before they eliminate us," he said.
"We have to recognize that the global Islamic movement is an existential threat — it’s very different than anything we’ve ever faced before."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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