President Barack Obama's hubris actually made things worse in the Muslim world rather than improving them as he promised, Pete Hoekstra, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, tells
Newsmax TV.
"This president said before he got elected that the world will see America differently, especially the Muslim world 'because, you know, I lived in a Muslim country,'" Hoekstra said Monday on "The Hard Line."
"That says, everybody who came before him, everybody in government, everybody in the State Department, in Congress, you guys are all naïve," Hoekstra told host Ed Berliner. "The world's going to look at America differently because guess what, I'm president and you're not anymore, and it was hubris. People and organizations and countries, they operate in their national self-interest. They're not going to change just because the opposition has a new leader."
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Asked whether the United States can fix Libya, Hoekstra said the United States already did that in 2004 when its leader Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons program, paid reparations to the victims of his terrorist activities and he allied himself with the United States to kill radical jihadists.
"In 2011 when this administration overthrew Gadhafi, they snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. I don't know if they were naïve or not, but they sure were stupid," he said.
And the issue goes beyond Libya, he added.
"We did fix Egypt at one time. Syria wasn't an issue until we intervened, Iraq wasn't a problem until we intervened," he said. "And so in many cases, we fostered this upon ourself ... The bottom line here is this administration believed that they could deal with radical jihadists and they can't. Radical jihadists will not change their behavior just because we are nicer to them and because we have a new president in the White House. Their ultimate goal and objective is to destroy civilization as we know it and until they achieve that objective, they will not stop."
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