The violent ISIS jihadists who are beheading and burning people around the world are a direct result of President Barack Obama's feeble foreign policy, according to Florida Rep. Ted Yoho, who said the sadistic terrorists only stand to be emboldened unless the United States changes its tack.
"We're seeing them spread throughout the world, but in the Middle East they've got the largest foothold they've ever had of any terrorist group," Yoho said Thursday during an appearance on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
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"If you look at this terrorist group's origination, they spawned out of al-Qaida after our president said that al-Qaida is on the run and that they're just a JV team. There were 200 to 300 members that were so violent that al-Qaida disowned them.
"But that group has become 30,000 to 40,000 people, they've got $2 billion worth of assets, they're the best funded terrorist organization in the world and the best armed.
"It's our broken foreign policy that is allowing them to spread throughout the world. We pulled out of Iraq against the generals' and the military experts' recommendation and we left a vacuum, and that vacuum is going to be filled with the person willing to step up and that is the Islamic terrorist organization."
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Going into Iraq and Afghanistan without a defined mission and end game resulted in beating down al-Qaida but spawned ISIS, he said. And America's perceived ambivalence has damaged its global reputation.
"Our allies don't know if they can trust or depend on us and our enemies don't fear us," said Yoho.
Yoho characterized this week's White House summit on terrorism as "a feel-good thing" on a subject that deserves a greater level of seriousness and attention.
"When you have the President of the United States unwilling to identify who the terrorists are as Islamic radical jihadists, how can you solve a problem?" he asked. "They're putting the emphasis on 'we've got a list of what our concerns are' so we can deal with it here in our own country.
"It's never wrong to listen to what's going on around you, but we've got a broken foreign policy. And for this administration and their spokesman for the State Department, they're saying the root problem is they don't have jobs and our role should be to help build democracies and jobs."
He defended the proposal of selling arms to allies to fight the terrorists.
"The sentiment is yes, we need to supply these people with lethal weapons because this fight is over there, more so their fight, and we need to make sure they have the armament and have them be willing to invest into their own countries and put their own troops and boots on the ground, not American troops on the ground," he said.
Yoho also predicted that the Senate will pass a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security before money runs out on Feb. 27.
"We wrote and passed a good bill from the House," he said. "The DHS bill funds the Department of Homeland Security, our Coast Guard, border security and the whole department. The only thing it doesn't fund is the processing of the illegal action that this president wants to give visas to five million people at once.
"There's no reason for him to hold it up, especially when you have the judge saying what he's doing is illegal.
"In addition, [Homeland Security Secretary] Jeh Johnson says they're not moving forward in processing anybody because there is this question of the legality of what he's doing. I don't know anybody in America or in Congress that's not for responsible immigration reform, and that's what we need to do."
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