DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday said that the terrorist bloodbath in Paris underscored the failures of President Obama’s anti-war stance and his timid foreign policy.
“He may be tired of war, but our enemies are not tired of killing us and they are getting stronger,” Mr. Cruz said on Fox News.
He said the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday, which killed at least 129 people and wounded 352, was the latest example of how every conflict in the world has gotten worse under the foreign policy of Mr. Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is the leading candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
“We need a commander-in-chief who says, ’We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism,’ ” said Mr. Cruz, later adding that Mr. Obama “will not even utter the words ’radical Islamic terrorism.’ So he’s not setting out to defeat them.”
The blistering critique of the Obama administration’s fight against the the terrorist army known as Islamic State, which has taken credit for the Paris massacre, served as a preview of questions Mrs. Clinton could face her in a candidate’s debate here later Saturday.
Mr. Cruz vowed that if elected president he would use overwhelming U.S. air power and arm Kurdish fighters to defeat the Islamic State, which controls a huge swath of territory in Iraq and Syrian and has waged attacks throughout the world.
“In the first Persian Gulf War, we had roughly 1,100 air attacks a day. Obama right now is doing 15 to 30 air attacks a day,” he said. “It’s pinprick, it’s photo-op foreign policy.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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