Sen. Marco Rubio says if he were president he would push for a sustained U.S. military presence in the Middle East.
"I'm not saying 100,000 troops, but certainly some level that allows us to project power quickly and confront challenges and threats," the Florida Republican said Monday on Fox News Channel's
"Your World with Neil Cavuto."
The mission to target Osama bin Laden would have been impossible without a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, he said.
On the flip side, Rubio pointed out that when President Barack Obama pulled troops out of Iraq it allowed then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "to go whole hog on his persecution of Sunnis."
That, he said, created fertile ground for insurgency of the Islamic State group (ISIS).
"This is just going to be an ongoing threat for the foreseeable future," Rubio said, "because radical Islam isn't just an organization, it's an ideology that has spread to every corner of the world now."
Despite his theoretical presidential action, Rubio reiterated that he has yet to decide whether he will seek the GOP nomination for the White House in 2016. He also said any decision would not be based whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or any other candidate decided to get into the race.
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