Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said that entrants to the US from visa waiver countries should “come through global entry” and that “people who believe in Islam” “need to be the boots on the ground” against ISIS on Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Wolf.”
Rand said, “for the visa waiver countries, these are our friends, our allies, England, Germany, France, what I would say is, yes, you can come and visit us, come through global entry. That means you do a background check. If you’re a businessman or woman from France, you come here all the time, we want you to come. We want to do business with France. But, I don’t think it’s asking too much to go through global entry. I went through the frequent flyer program to be able to fly in a less molested way in the United States. I think french travelers could do the same kind of thing. I think if we don’t do that, we have to have a waiting period. Because, I think many of the…attackers in France, could have actually gotten on a plane. Some of them will probably turn out to be — have been on a watch list, but I think some of them will turn out to be people for whom we did not have any suspicion. But I think making people go through a process to visit our country, it’s the only thing we can do. And it’s actually a lot less expensive than sending a half a million young American sons and daughters back there for another war. I think another big land war in Iraq is a mistake, and I’m not for it.”
He added that “a long-lasting victory in the Middle East, and a long-lasting peace that means something, ultimately will have to be that the civilized parts of Islam, which I think are 90 to 95% of Islam, they have to rise up, they need to be the boots on the ground, and they need to stamp out this aberration. I’ve met so many good people who are of the Islamic faith. They need to rise up and they need to say, ‘What ISIS is doing, it does not represent our religion.’ If America goes over there and we win the war again, which we can, and America occupies Sunni Muslim cities, it will be another generation that will rise up within years to battle us. If it’s local people, particularly Sunni Muslims, who stand up and say, ‘Enough’s enough, ISIS doesn’t represent my religion,’ that’s when the ultimate victory comes. But it will be in a completely and entirely annihilating, not just people that are part of the ISIS movement, but this aberrant ideology, that I don’t think represents Islam, but I can’t be the spokesman for that. People who believe in Islam need to rise up, they need to be loud, and they need to be the boots on the ground.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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