Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have been forced to admit on the Sunday shows that the Obama approved raid on ISIS in Syria has been successful.
On ABC’s This Week, Sen. McConnell said, “Well, the president has done a good job with these special operations type missions. Where I think the administration has fallen down is they tend not to favor, generally speaking, capture and interrogation. Although it’s good that the wife of this terrorist was captured and will be interrogated. I’ve been distressed, for example, about the willingness to release prisoners at Guantanamo. Look, this is not a criminal type matter. This is a defense matter. What you want to do is you want to capture people, you want to interrogate them, and you want to try to prevent the next atrocity. I wish we’d had, you know, frankly, more emphasis on capturing, detaining and interrogation than on strikes. Although the strikes are important, and I congratulate those who carried it out. It sounds like it was a very successful mission.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on Fox News Sunday, “For now, let’s just say it was a successful raid, and it’s good news. Obviously, anytime you can take away and degrade top leadership of an organization it’s a positive step forward….It remains a risk, but obviously we want to congratulate the men and women in uniform who carried it out and the President for undertaking the mission.”
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McConnell and Rubio are two of the Republicans who tried to sabotage President Obama’s foreign policy with their letter to Iran, so for Republicans to not only admit the mission was a success, but also praise the president is something that has been virtually unseen during the Obama presidency.
Reports are that the US raid in Syria has killed 32 ISIS members including four leaders. The symbolic message that the raid sends is that terrorists are not safe anywhere on this Earth. It takes an unspeakable amount of leadership for the President to authorize a mission where special operations forces are going into a territory where they have no allies on the ground.
The courage showed by those who carried out the mission is immeasurable, but they wouldn’t have been there if Obama would not have approved the mission. As much as it must drive Republicans crazy, even they are admitting that President Obama has been successful.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
