Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions said late Thursday that President Obama’s refusal to specifically connect recent terrorism acts to radical Islamic groups will impede the world’s ability to fully address the threat.
“I think it is a legitimate concern that the president is not seemingly taking this seriously enough,” Sessions told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “This whole idea — refusal — to address the reality of the threat we face does impact our ability to defend America and help the whole world see the nature of the threat we face which is very real.”
Sessions, recently appointed the head of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s national security advisory committee, cited political correctness as one of the Obama administration’s reasons for not calling out the Islamic-affiliated terrorists. He added that that kind of “intimidation of free speech is dangerous” because it makes it more difficult to understand and fix the problem.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest chairman said there has long been a strain of radical groups who take a religion’s beliefs out of context and use them for its own benefit. It is important, Sessions said, for Muslims to discern what is true and untrue among the terrorist group’s claims about Islam.
“We have no obligation to place our country at greater risk than we ought to as a result of some massive refugee program so I think the United States needs to help the world see with clarity the threat that we face and move away from denial,” Sessions concluded.
