Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry slammed President Barack Obama's foreign policy efforts on Wednesday, saying that "Americans are starving for leadership that will act and solve the great challenges we face today."
"Leadership that isn't ashamed to see America lead the world again and that stands with its allies again," said Perry, who served as the Lone Star state's top Republican from 2000 to earlier this year. "This is the view we must tirelessly protect.
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"This is the view the world needs to see," Perry added. "And this is the view I'll be sharing with Americans as I continue to travel this country."
Perry, 65, who is considering a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, outlined his foreign policy agenda in a video released to Newsmax by his RickPAC organization.
The former governor attacked Obama's lack of leadership on the global stage — and he imagined how America's enemies and allies viewed this nation amid the vacuum.
"As someone who believes America is the greatest force for freedom and prosperity in the world, it's frustrating to see the president shuffle from one crisis to the next, and to hear his words ring hollow when there should be unwavering resolve," Perry said.
"But let's step back for a minute and imagine the view from the outside, imagine how the president's weakness and fecklessness are received by both our friends and our enemies."
From Iran — "as they're trying to negotiate a nuclear agreement with the United States" — Perry said that he imagined leaders there seeing heads of state from "Western countries scrambling to get Vladimir Putin to sign a piece of paper that he'll completely ignore within hours."
Regarding the Islamic State, Perry said: "After seeing this administration fail to name the enemy that has viciously slaughtered innocent men, women and children for months, imagine the great confusion in the Supreme Revolutionary Council when they heard U.S. Undersecretary of State Rick Stengel say we will win this war with words by engaging ISIS on Twitter, and we should fear not because ISIS isn't as powerful as Buzzfeed when it comes to social media.
"And imagine their great glee when they realized this wasn't a parody," he added.
Perry also harkened back to Obama's infamous description of ISIS terrorists last year in saying, "but maybe we shouldn't be surprised by any of this when the president calls the most dangerous Islamist terrorist group on the planet the JV team."
For America's allies, "the view is bleak," Perry said, "as they hear this president's empty words and watch him miscalculate and underestimate time and again the absolute necessity of American leadership on the world stage.
"What does it look like from Tel Aviv when our president is more willing to negotiate with Iran than to hear the concerns of our strongest Middle Eastern ally?" Perry asked.
"What does it look like from the streets of Paris when the president of the United States fails to show up in France after the worst terror attack in that country in decades?
"And what does it look like from the squares in Poland, where a people so recently freed from subjugation by Russia see Putin getting away with dismembering Ukraine, and wonder if this president will act to save NATO?"
Perry said that our allies "see President Obama's actions, and perhaps just as importantly, his inaction and see confusion where there should be moral clarity. Unreliability where there should be unwavering support.
"This is not the America I know," the former governor concluded. "The choice we face in 2016 is whether we can endure a future that looks like the last six years.
"Our children will not inherit an America with greater opportunity when America continues to shrink from its role in the world."