President Barack Obama lacks the "heart" and "strategy" a leader needs to stand up to a threat like the militant terrorists with the Islamic State (ISIS), said Rep. Sean Duffy.
Duffy told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Obama's lack of determination to combat ISIS had caused angst among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and was also interfering with enlisting the support of allies in the effort.
"The lack of strategy, the lack of heart the president has to address ISIS, not just has caused some heartburn on the Hill, but it's also made it very difficult for him to build allies in the region.
"That's why no one's stepping forward to say, 'I'm willing to follow this president in to fight and assist in the region,' when he doesn't have the heart and passion himself," the Wisconsin Republican said Tuesday.
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Rep. Donna Edwards, disagreed, calling the president's approach "deliberate and thoughtful" in developing his strategy against ISIS, and said it was preferable to previous efforts by the U.S. in Iraq.
"There's no such thing as too deliberate in an environment where we have been too aggressive too quickly, and (led to) very inappropriate action in Iraq. So, I think that what we have is a president who said we had to have the politics right," the Maryland Democrat told "Morning Joe" on Tuesday.
"I think that there's no such thing as too deliberate when you're trying to get to a lasting peace."
Duffy maintained Obama was "playing politics" in his approach to developing a campaign against ISIS, and only addressed the issue when pressured to do so.
"He has kicked and screamed trying to stay out of Iraq and Syria. And, it's only politics that caused him to give that speech a week ago saying we're going to have this very tepid strategy that's going to train 'vetted moderates' in Syria," he said.
Duffy predicted it would be "more than a couple of years," and perhaps decades, for governments in the region to create stability, and maintained that the U.S. needed to help "give them some space to work out the differences in the politics of the region."
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