John Kasich is ready for war

The Republican presidential candidate said he agreed with France that the Paris terrorist attacks were an act of war, and therefore an attack on the United States and every other NATO member state.

He said it’s high time to invoke Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which states that an armed attack against any NATO member state “shall be considered an attack against them all.”

“We must be swift, we must be decisive and we must be absolute,” Kasich said. “There can be no negotiating and no delay.”

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Kasich said in addition to airstrikes, America must work with an international coalition of armed forces to put boots on the ground to destroy the Islamic State.

He also appeared to call for a new federal agency to wage a propaganda war — “a war of ideas” — that would defend American values abroad. Kasich said the new agency would have “a clear mandate to promote the core Judeo-Christian values that we and our allies share” and would specifically target the Middle East, China, Russia and Iran.

“There seems to be a fear today to call America exceptional. I believe America is exceptional; it is simply a statement of the obvious,” Kasich said. “We are the melting pot of every people in the world. When Paris hurts we hurt.”

In regards to the Syrian refugee crisis, Kasich acknowledged that there isn’t much he can do besides writing to President Obama and Congress about his desire to refuse shelter to “refugees” in Ohio until the United States has an effective system to screen out foreign nationals who seek to do the U.S. harm.

Kasich, who ranks eleventh in the Washington Examiner‘s GOP presidential power rankings, also said he was open to putting a Democrat in the cabinet of a Kasich administration.