President Barack Obama's strategy on combating the Islamic State (ISIS) is based on public opinion rather than relying on advice from military leaders, said Sen. Jim Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Case in point, Inhofe told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" that in 2011, the Armed Services Committee, as well as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, advised the president against pulling all troops from Iraq. However, he said Obama didn't follow that advice, a move that had now "come home to haunt him."
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"This president responds to one thing, and that is public opinion. When the public demands that we defend America, he will do it. It's all poll-driven," the Oklahoma Republican said Wednesday.
A poll by
NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg, taken after the president's Sept. 10 speech outlining his plan to defeat the Islamic State, showed that 62 percent of voters said they supported Obama's plan to attack the terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria.
Inhofe said the polls represented "70 percent of the people knowing that our homeland is in danger," and that Obama would have to respond to that "if for no other reason that this is a popular thing that's going to help his legacy."
Dempsey was "very courageous," Inhofe said, when he testified Tuesday on Capitol Hill and explained he would advise the use of U.S. ground forces in the fight against ISIS if the current campaign using foreign troops failed.
"He answered truth. He's under oath. He has to do that. Besides that, he's a military man," Inhofe said, adding the president had an "obsession" with boots on the ground.
Obama had also attempted to downplay the threat by ISIS, Inhofe said, by characterizing it as a "bunch of ragtag terrorists out there." He countered that we were involved in a war and "our homeland is at risk."
A further issue was Obama's reduction in U.S. military forces, which Inhofe called the "disarming of America," a move that was "coming home to haunt us now," because the country didn't have "the resources we've historically had."