Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis and Sen. Kay Hagan on Wednesday agreed with President Barack Obama that the Islamic State poses a grave threat to the United States, but Tillis harshly criticized the president and Hagan for not acting sooner.
Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat from Greensboro who is in a close race with Tillis, stressed the threat from the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, and said that “their murder of two American journalists is an attack on America and our values.”
“We must respond, and we will respond, by taking immediate, sustained and decisive action,” Hagan said. She added that she started to press the administration to arm moderate Syrian rebels last spring, “and I am glad that effort will be accelerated.
“The president and our military leadership have now developed a plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels and defeat ISIS with a sustained campaign of airstrikes,” Hagan said, adding the effort must be carried out with allies and other Arab states and not by the United States alone.
Tillis said the Islamic State was “growing stronger each day because of President Obama’s failed foreign policy and lack of leadership.” He added that “the job of a senator is to stand up to the president when they are wrong, something Sen. Hagan has repeatedly refused to do.”
“The president and Sen. Hagan have been leading from behind, ignoring ISIS for too long, and the world is now less safe as a result,” Tillis said.
“At a minimum, we need to continue airstrikes until the president can be assured that ISIS’s own enemies in the region will eliminate them on the ground. No option should be left off the table,” the Republican House speaker and Senate candidate from Huntersville said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr in a statement said the Islamic State “is a capable, well organized, and well financed group that has taken over more geographic territory than any terrorist group in recent history.”
“I feel strongly that they cannot be simply contained. They must be totally eliminated,” the Republican senator from Winston-Salem said.
Burr also blamed Obama for failing to act sooner.
“I believe that if the president had taken decisive action to address this threat in its infancy, we would not be facing the extremist army that is overrunning Iraq today,” he said.
U.S. Renee Ellmers, a Republican from Dunn representing the 2nd District, said, “I was impressed with the president’s deliberate tone and determination to unite our allies to stop ISIL. But the true measure of his words will be determined by his actions. We are facing an extremely dangerous situation in the Middle East with the rise of ISIL.”
ISIL, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is the government’s preferred name for the group.
Rep. David Price, a Democrat from Chapel Hill, praised the president’s response to a growing threat.
“Tonight, President Obama underscored this grave threat to our national security and laid out a credible military and diplomatic strategy to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL with the cooperation of a strong coalition of allies in the region and from around the world,” Price said.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/09/10/4140427/nc-politicians-agree-on-threat.html?sp=/99/102/
