While Great Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron cut his vacation short to deal with the Islamic State (ISIS) crisis, President Obama was golfing on Martha's Vineyard.
While Cameron took action, raising Great Britain's terror threat to "severe," Obama told Americans "We don’t have a strategy, yet."
So, while President Obama has spent Labor Day weekend raising money for Democrats, is it any wonder why some lawmakers and political analysts, including Red State's Erick Erickson are asking: "Can we borrow David Cameron?"
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Even New York Rep. Peter King on Sunday said he wishes "our president was showing the same leadership David Cameron showed."
"
What is President Obama waiting for?" King said in an interview Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation."
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Cameron said on Friday that the terror level in the U.K. was raised to "severe" in response to more news of violence by ISIS in the two countries where the group is trying to establish a caliphate. Several members of the jihadist group may be British citizens,
FoxNews.com reported.
"This is not some foreign conflict thousands of miles away that we can hope to ignore," the U.K. prime minister said.
"The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security here in the U.K.," he said.
"We cannot appease this ideology," he added. "We have to confront it at home and abroad. To do this we need a tough, intelligent, patient, comprehensive approach to defeat the terrorist threat at its source."
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While he did return to Washington briefly during his vacation and made formal statements from Martha's Vineyard, Obama was sharply criticized for hitting the golf course just minutes after
making a statement about the beheading of American journalist James Foley.
Cameron had previously called the killing of Foley
an act of murder, which was allegedly carried out by
former U.K. rapper Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary. The prime minister returned from his holiday in Cornwall immediately after learning that Foley's executioner was British.
The
U.S. has launched airstrikes and provided humanitarian aid in ISIS-captured regions of Iraq. But Obama has not mirrored Cameron's action on the terror alert, despite suspecting there are
hundreds of Americans fighting for ISIS.
Meanwhile, the White House scrambled on Friday to explain comments Obama made on Thursday that his administration
doesn't "have a strategy yet" for how to deal with ISIS.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during an appearance on
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the Obama administration does have a "comprehensive strategy" for confronting ISIS, adding that Obama was referring to military strikes in Syria and whether he will "seek congressional authorization to order military strikes inside of Syria."
King told Newsmax Friday that "there's no way any of us can excuse" Obama's admission that he doesn't have a strategy for dealing with ISIS, explaining that it makes the United States look weak to both our allies and our enemies.
The contrast between Obama's response to the ISIS threat to that of Cameron's was noted by conservative commentators and on Twitter.
Townhall.com's Cortney O'Brien wrote Friday that "unlike someone we know, it sounds like United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron has a strategy for defeating Islamic extremists."
Erickson tweeted Friday:
Obama is headlining several fundraisers over the Labor Day weekend.
Cameron on Monday said he will force airlines to share flight-lists with security services and give police the power to confiscate passports as he set out Britain’s response to the rise of Islamic State.
In a statement to Parliament, Cameron also said the government will look at how it can restrict the movements of suspected terrorists in Britain and stop those who are British nationals returning to the U.K.
“What we need is a targeted power to exclude British nationals from the United Kingdom,” the prime minister told lawmakers in London today. “We need to address any potential gap in our armory to keep our country safe.”
President Obama appeared to be downplaying the Islamic State as well as Russia's threat against Ukraine while speaking to Democratic donors at a
New York fundraiser Friday, saying that this "is not something that's comparable to the challenges we faced in the Cold War."
"The world has always been messy," Obama said. "We will get through these challenging times just like we have in the past."
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