Lindsey Graham: Obama's Foreign, Domestic Policies Disappointing
Sunday, 25 Jan 2015 09:54 AM
President Barack Obama's foreign and domestic policies are failures despite his positive words in Tuesday's State of the Union address, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on "The Cats Roundtable" on AM 970 in New York.
"The war he described on the foreign policy front doesn't exist," Graham said, noting that al-Qaida has not been decimated and, "We did not roll back ISIL (the Islamic State) in Syria."
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Graham just met with members of the Free Syrian Army a week ago, and was told that the Islamic State is "stronger than ever, selling oil and wheat to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Graham said.
Graham said Obama's failure to call the war on terror a religious war is "a huge mistake," he said.
"The [American] friends in the region told me to my face it’s better to be an American enemy than it is to be her friend, because you [America] respect your enemies," he said.
Both Arabs and Israelis told him that if the United States makes the nuclear deal with Iran that the White House is working on, there will be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Israel already has a nuclear weapon, but none of its Arab neighbors felt threatened or sought their own weapon, Graham told host John Catsimatidis. A nuclear Iran does make them feel they'll need their own nuclear weapons, he said.
The current low oil prices are aimed at hurting Iran, Graham said, to force them to negotiate a deal the Saudis like better, he said.
"The Saudi Arabians told us in no uncertain terms that they will not sit on the sidelines and watch Iran get a nuclear capability without matching it — and that they are very disappointed in American leadership," he said. The Saudis have volunteered their army to go into Syria to fight the Islamic State and Assad, but they want the United States to go with them, he added.
Turning to House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress on the Iran deal, Graham said he "couldn’t think of a better person" to explain the situation.
The invitation reportedly angered the White House because Boehner did not advise President Barack Obama ahead of time.
Graham said Obama's State of the Union was "a liberal’s dream and an average American’s nightmare," because of his big plans to fund community college education and offer tax cuts while raising taxes on upper incomes, including the inheritance tax.
Graham called Obama's domestic plans "unsustainable" and proves he didn't pay attention to the midterm elections, which gave both chambers of Congress Republican majorities.
Obama says he wants to work with Republicans, but threatened multiple vetoes on GOP initiatives, he said. Graham told Catsimatidis that it is himself who has shown the ability to reach across party lines to get things done.
He noted that he faced six Republicans in the 2014 primary because he worked with Democrats on immigration. He also said he voted for Obama's liberal Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan "because I thought they were qualified Supreme Court nominees."
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