Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned that the United States is losing the war with radical Islamists, and called on Congress to lay out a plan to deal with the crisis now as a matter of national urgency.
"The U.S. today is losing the war with radical Islamists," he said at the Iowa Freedom Summit. "We have to have the courage to confront just how badly we are doing in this war."
To vast applause, he continued, "If you are a Muslim who wants to impose Sharia law by cutting off my head, I have a desire to kill you before you cut off my head."
The 2012 Republican candidate for the presidency also took a swipe at President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry by saying, "You cannot win this war if you don’t admit that it’s a war.
Story continues below video.
%%control:GenericVideoCode?
"It’s not just as an anti-Obama comment ... the State Department was equally as bad, quite frankly, under George W. Bush — the unwillingness to tell the truth about who are enemies are was equally bad after the first year."
Gingrich went on to say, "This is global war, and yet they insist in talking about geography" so countries, including the U.S., concentrate on the Islamic State (ISIS) in northern Syria.
Noting that Boko Haram fighters in Africa killed more people than Ebola last year, he said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not even list them as a terror organization.
"I look around the planet at suicide bombings, I look at beheadings, there is one common pattern occurring everywhere across the planet — that is radical Islamists who hate our civilization, are prepared to cut off our head, are determined to impose their religion by force."
Gingrich said that "people on the left and some on the right" may think he wants to "have an army of 7 million and occupy everything."
"Baloney," he said. "This is a campaign that should be fought with the largest possible number of allies, a campaign that should be fought wherever possible by surgically and methodically hunting down these [terrorists].'"
Gingrich then asked his audience to call on its members of Congress to urge them to hold six months of hearings in the House and Senate to deal with the radical Islamists.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.