Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ripped President Barack Obama's response to the threat the Islamic State (ISIS) poses in a speech Wednesday.
The Washington Times reports that Cruz, a Republican, said he has yet to see a "seriousness of purpose" emerge from the White House when it comes to taking on ISIS.
"What do you intend to do and how do you intend to do it?" Cruz said, according to the Times. "With regard to ISIS, we have not seen a seriousness of purpose. We have seen, instead, photo op foreign policy — a bomb here, a missile there."
Later in the speech, Cruz said, "The solution to ISIS is to hunt down and kill the terrorist leaders.
"But when you have an administration that will not utter the words 'radical Islamic terrorist,' you have an administration that is unwilling to effectively design and implement a strategy to defeat radical Islamic terrorists."
Cruz made the comments at the Center for Security Policy's "Defeat Jihad" summit in Washington.
Cruz is considering running for president in the 2016 election.
Cruz, who first joined the Senate two years ago, would like to see the U.S. government provide weapons to the Kurds in the Middle East fighting the ISIS terror group. He also wants Americans who join ISIS to be stripped of their U.S. citizenship.
Cruz took offense to comments
Obama made at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, when he said, "Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."
"Now the last I checked, the Crusades began in the 11th century," Cruz said. "I don't think it's too much to ask for the president to stay in the current millennium."
Cruz also responded to comments Obama made referencing the terrorist attack at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo last month.
"What the president was saying is that Charlie was wrong to put a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on their magazine," Cruz said, according to the Times. "And implicitly what that's saying is the terrorists who murdered those journalists had a legitimate grievance. That is wrong, that is pernicious."
On Wednesday,
Obama sent Congress legislation to authorize a military force that would battle ISIS fighters.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Obama's request is the "first step" in America stepping up its fight against the terror group.
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