GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul Monday called for a "moratorium on immigration" from the Middle East, noting that the woman involved in last week's mass shootings in San Bernardino should not have been in the United States.
"It appears she was dishonest on her papers to get here," the Kentucky senator told
Fox News' "America's Newsroom"program about Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband, Syed Farook were hailed as "soldiers" of ISIS' self-proclaimed caliphate after they shot and killed 14 people and injured dozens of others during a social services center holiday gathering last Wednesday.
Malik entered the United States legally through a visa program that allows fiances of American citizens to be brought into the country.
"Even the president in his speech admitted we didn't have enough scrutiny on her coming here," Paul said. "I think we need to revamp our entire system."
Paul said that real peace and victory over ISIS will be when "civilized, mainstream Islam" rises up and stamps it out.
"If Europeans or Americans are seen as the ones defeating ISIS, then they say these are the crusaders again and they spring back up another generation," said Paul.
But the war can't be won with small groups of 50 or even 200 people, like Obama advocates, said Paul, because "you don't go to war with underwhelming force. Then we
need to have a debate on whether overwhelming force is the answer."
Meanwhile, Paul told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show that he does not agree with other GOP candidates, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, that restoring the National Security Agency's metadata collection program is the answer.
"There will always be people like Christie, who are willing to give up your liberty for a false sense of security," said Paul. "But we've looked at this and found that it didn't find any terrorists or stop any attacks. Are we willing to give up all of our privacy, willing to give up the idea that warrants should be individualized and allow data to be collected without anyone's name on the warrant?"
Instead, Paul said he believes the mass collection has made the United States less safe, "because I think the haystack is so large, we're getting lost in the haystack. I would like to target the people coming here to attack us
. . . Will it have been worth it if we no longer are who we are in the process of defending the country?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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