Sen. Marco Rubio lambasted President Obama for his lack of leadership on the world stage Saturday, saying the president doesn’t want to lead in the Middle East and is doing the “bare minimum” amid fears that he could risk his “political narrative.”
In an interview with Fox News, Rubio told host Martha MacCallum that a U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State will not happen because Obama is fearful of losing the narrative “that he got us out of the Middle East” and “out of conflict.” He made the remark when the host asked if a World War II-style coalition could be forming after a terrorist attack in Paris Friday night left 128 dead and 350 injured, including 99 seriously injured, reportedly at the hands of the Islamic State.
“That will not happen without American leadership,” Rubio said of the coalition. “This president has chosen not to pursue that because he thinks that, politically for him, it’s admitting that we’re re-engaged in another hostility in the Middle East. So he’s trying to do the bare minimum he can without losing the political narrative that he got us out of the Middle East and got us out of conflict. In the absence of American competing power and leadership, that coalition will never happen.”
The 2016 hopeful also called for Islamic State killings that involve “high-profile, humiliating defeats,” a line he said three times during the interview.
“We need to target these [training] camps and begin to target them. We also are going to need the involvement of U.S. special operators to conduct these attacks,” Rubio said. “I believe we need to subject [the Islamic State] to high-profile, humiliating defeats, meaning special operations attacks that are filmed, basically, so we can show the world that these are not invincible people. It discourages people from joining their cause.”
“Right now, the perception they create through the use of social media and propaganda is that they’re unstoppable. Because of these attacks in Paris, they will add recruits, and they will raise money off of this,” Rubio said. “So we need to subject them to high-profile, humiliating defeats to cut off this narrative that they’re this unstoppable force.”
The 2016 hopeful told the host that Sunni nations and the Sunni people are going to need to defeat the Islamic State “ideologically,” saying they are the ones who will pay the biggest price off the bat. He added that a continued effort to combat the Islamic State as part of a coalition will not go on without American leadership.
He also argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to step into the Middle East and fill the vacuum the U.S. left and become the “power broker” in the region. However, he said Putin will be unable to bring together a coalition in the region because his main goal, unlike the U.S., isn’t to defeat the Islamic State.
In a seperate video on his Facebook page, the Florida senator called the embroiling situation a “clash of civilizations” and a “wake-up call” showing the need to combat radical Islam.
“The attacks in Paris are a wake-up call. A wake-up call to the fact that what we’re involved in now is a civilizational conflict with radical Islam,” Rubio said. “This is not a grievance-based conflict. This is a clash of civilizations.”
The Florida senator sits atop the Washington Examiner’s latest power rankings, and polls behind only Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the latest RealClearPolitics national average.
