Wednesday, November 18, 2015
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By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Gov. John Kasich called for international cooperation, including efforts by moderate Muslims, to counter the Islamic State and any future terrorist groups waging war against the West.
Kasich also reiterated his support for sending U.S. and other troops abroad to counter militant Islamic groups as part of a broad international coalition after attacks in Paris last week that left nearly 130 people dead and several hundred others injured.
“Unless we want to see the bloodshed of Paris visited here in America and in the streets of our allies’ capitals, we need to get serious, immediately, about dealing with this threat,” the governor told an audience Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
“There can be no negotiating or delay with this darkness. We simply must defeat it.”
He added later, “Sometimes, my sense is that the West would like to look the other way; the West would like to believe that this somehow will go away. It will not, and I’ve been saying for a long period of time you either pay me now or you’re gonna pay me a heck of a lot later if we sit back and don’t do what we need to do to destroy ISIS.”
Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate, offered the comments at the National Press Club as part of a speech on national security, where he called for increased support for the U.S. military and a rebuilding of the country’s leadership position internationally.
As he did over the weekend, Kasich urged a NATO response to the Paris attack, with troops on the ground to counter the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The stance runs counter to President Barack Obama’s position. The president has voiced support for airstrikes but not committing U.S. combat forces on the ground overseas.
“We must be swift, decisive and absolute,” Kasich said, adding later, “Experience, of course, has shown that an air campaign on its own is not enough.”
Kasich continued to call on the president to cease allowing Syrian refugees into the country, though the governor acknowledged Ohio had no authority to block refugees from its borders.
He added, “We need, as the West, including some of our friends in the moderate Muslim community, to make it clear to people that you’re not going to paradise by walking into a concert hall and killing innocent people. We have to win the war of ideas.”
The Democratic National Committee quickly condemned Kasich’s comments.
“It’s tough for John Kasich to position himself as a national security expert when he’s been on the wrong side of so many foreign policy decisions,” TJ Helmstetter, a DNC spokesman, said in a released statement.
“As a Fox News commentator, Kasich repeatedly agitated for war, defended torture and alienated Muslim-Americans who are among our most-important partners in the fight against extremism. John Kasich offers the same go-it-alone foreign policies as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that failed us in the past, and he can’t be trusted when it comes to America’s national security.”