There's no excuse for President Barack Obama to say that the administration has no strategy to deal with the Islamic State because it projects a weak image to the world and the enemy, says New York Rep. Peter King.
"There's no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday," King told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Friday.
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"You have the whole world watching, you have a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is going to do and then for him to walk out – I'm not trying to be trivial here – but in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about, and he said that's the vision of the second-quarter numbers on the economy," King said.
"This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded, and he's trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism," he said. "And then he goes on to say that he has no strategy."
Obama said during a
news conference before meeting with his national security team Thursday that "we don't have a strategy yet" for how to deal with the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is trying to establish an caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
"What this showed was, you know there's always a few issues you're not overly familiar with, and you can find yourself saying the wrong thing or saying it in the wrong way," King said. "That's the way it struck me."
"Foreign policy is not a major issue to him. It's something he has to talk about, he's not crazy about it, and he'd much rather talk about some social engineering or healthcare or whatever," he said. "For a guy that's so articulate, he does not know how to express himself on this issue.
"It was just a terrible performance by a commander-in-chief."
The other problem is that the world is watching to see what the United States is going to do, King said.
"Forget that our allies are watching, forget that the American people are watching. ISIS is watching," he said.
"If you were the head of ISIS, if you were [ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi, or if you were any of the ISIS, anyone in the ISIS leadership, would you come away from yesterday afraid of the United States?" he asked. "Would you be afraid that the United States is going to use all its power to crush ISIS?"
"Or would you think, there's a person who's going to go out and do a few fundraisers over the Labor Day weekend?
"We are the strongest nation in the world," King said. "If we use our power correctly, we can stamp out ISIS, we can stop Islamic terrorism."
The Obama administration tried to offer an explanation for Obama's comments Friday.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on MSNBC's
"Morning Joe" that the administration does have a "comprehensive strategy" on confronting ISIS, and that when Obama said that "we don't have a strategy yet" he was talking about the administration's plan to launch airstrikes in Syria and whether or not he will ask for Congress to approve the strikes.
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