Graham blames Obama for rise of ISIL in Middle East
Senator Lindsey Graham gives a speech where he announced his candidacy for US President on June 1, 2015 in South Carolina, (AFP photo).
“Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Senator Graham said on Sunday.
“Radical Islam is running wild in the Mideast,” he said. “I have never been more worried about an attack on our homeland than I am right now.”
“His failure to deal with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad three years ago has allowed ISIL to come back,” he added.
The South Carolina lawmaker also vowed to relentlessly destroy the terrorist group should he get elected president next year.
“If I get to be president, I’m going to focus on putting radical Islam back in a box and nailing it shut,” said Graham.
He pledged to send more military forces to the Middle East if he takes the office in 2016.
“My number one focus would be to rebuild our military that is being gutted and then send some of our soldiers back to Iraq to work with the Iraqi army to degrade and destroy ISIL not just in Iraq but in Syria too,” said the war hawk.
Graham criticized Obama for the withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq and said, “He left Iraq too soon.”
Since August 2014, the United States and its allies have carried out thousands of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria with the aim of “degrading and ultimately destroying” the ISIL terrorist group.
The president, however, has refused to send troops on the ground as suggested by many senior military officials.
The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.
SB/AGB