Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) stated, “we need to have a comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS. I’m not confident that we have that right now” and he’s “concerned that we’re not doing more. I don’t think we have this long-term strategy” on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Moulton said, “I’ve said for some time that ISIS is a national security threat to the United States, and to our allies, and we need to have a comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS. I’m not confident that we have that right now. We’re putting some troops on the ground. We’re dropping some bombs, but we need to talk about how we’re going to fill the political vacuums in the Middle East that [have] allowed ISIS to flourish. Now, I last served in Iraq during the surge, and we actually got Iraq to a relatively stable place, but then we pulled out. We pulled those political advisers out of the ministries, out of the prime minister’s office, and the Iraqi government went off the rails so much so, that its own army didn’t even trust them. And as a result, we now are sending troops back into Iraq, just five years after we left. I went back to Iraq, in February, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, and it was disheartening to see so much of what we fought for and frankly, achieved, just gone to waste, because we didn’t have a political plan for the aftermath.”
He added, “I was just concerned that we’re not doing more. I don’t think we have this long-term strategy. We’re not going to defeat ISIS just by killing their fighters on the ground. We have to have a diplomatic and political plan, and we’ve got to be clear, to the troops that we send into combat, what their long-term mission is. I don’t think we’ve made that clear.”
Moulton concluded that the president needs to give a short-term goal and “outline a long-term plan. It’s got to include all facets of our power. We’ve got to use not just our military power, but our economic might, and our diplomats. We’ve got to have a plan for the aftermath of Syria. We’ve got to have a plan to put the Iraqi government back together so we don’t have to keep sending troops there. And I also want to hear a plan to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes that we made coming out of Iraq as we come out of Afghanistan, because if we do that, and we create another political vacuum in the Middle East, just like we had before September 11th, where they were able to have terrorist camps, then we’ll be sending troops back into Afghanistan five years after we pulled them out, just like we’re doing today in Iraq.”
(h/t RNC Research)
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett