In an interview on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” program this weekend, Rick Santorum expressed his anger that President Obama hasn’t deployed the same resources to fight ISIS as the U.S. did in the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He told FRC President Tony Perkins that Obama, who has launched over 1,000 airstrikes against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, delivered a “muted” response to the militant group and has no intention to destroy it.
The former Pennsylvania senator said that this same lack of political will and urgency was the reason that the U.S. failed in Vietnam:
This is not an attempt by the president to defeat ISIS, it’s an attempt by the president to convince America that he’s trying to do something and by flying these very limited strikes that are having no tactical success because they’re not sufficient to achieve any tactical victories. So you have a political war, in a sense. If you go back and look at the war that I grew up with as a kid, which was Vietnam, you didn’t have a commitment, you didn’t have a commitment by the political leadership to have success.
Santorum and Perkins then agreed that Obama’s supposed “assault” on religious freedom in the U.S. is also permitting extremists to violently persecute Christians in the Middle East.
“I believe there is a correlation between the increase in the persecution of Christians globally and the increase in intolerance towards Christianity here at home,” Perkins said.
Santorum responded by bringing up the phony right-wing talking point the Obama refuses to use the words “freedom of religion”: “You have a president who is increasingly hostile to people of faith and in fact has changed the term he uses from ‘freedom of religion’ to ‘freedom of worship’ and sort of narrowing the rights that even Americans have. And when you have a president who is clearly assaulting religion here at home, it is sort of hard to then turn around and say ‘I’m going to defend religion around the world.’”
The recent rash of violence against Iraqi Christians started after Bush’s invasion of Iraq, a war that Santorum voted for and still supports.
