President Barack Obama seems to be restricting his own authority with his war powers request for fighting the war against the Islamic State (ISIS), says former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.
"The interesting thing that I've seen right now is the president seems to be coming in and trying to restrict his own authority, and that's strange," Gilmore told J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Friday.
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"It makes me wonder whether he's trying to restrict the authority of the next president also," he added.
Gilmore commends Congress for "asserting itself much more in foreign policy, which is good because that makes it more likely that the American people will get behind the foreign policy if we had one."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the details in Obama's war powers proposal are "intentionally" fuzzy, "because we believe it's important that there aren't overly burdensome constraints that are placed on the commander-in-chief who needs the flexibility to be able to respond to contingencies that emerge in a chaotic military conflict like this."
According to Gilmore, a Republican, Obama is "asking for some authority [but] he's keeping it fuzzy so that he has flexibility.
"But we don't know what he's going to do, and I don't think he does either," he said.
"The real challenge we're facing right now is less of a congressional authorization than a sense of direction, forcefulness, involvement in the world affairs, the role that America should play and will play in the 21st century," Gilmore said.
"The president seems to me to be casual and sloppy in the things he says because his mind is sloppy on foreign policy.
"I don't think he has a clear idea of what he's trying to do."
In addition, Obama "needs to understand that when the president of the United States speaks on foreign policy issues, the world reacts and listens very closely," he said.
"He has to be more careful about what he's trying to say."
For example, Gilmore said that Obama needs to be more careful "when he says that an attack on a kosher market in Paris is random," as well as when he recently made a comparison between the atrocities committed by ISIS and those by Christians during the Crusades.
"He has a sloppy language about the Crusades, which was unforgivable in terms of a national leader," he said.
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