Monday, September 29, 2014
Democratic Senate candidate Gary Peters supports the U.S. air strikes on the ISIS terror group in Iraq and Syria while his Republican challenger, Terri Lynn Land, remains largely silent on the military effort.
U.S. Rep. Peters, who voted in the House to fund rebel forces in Syria, said he backs the bombing of ISIS by the U.S.-led coalition but Congress must “constantly revisit” the effectiveness of the air campaign. The West Bloomfield Township Democrat added he believes the Houseand Senate should return to Washington during its current, campaign-season recess to debate -- and hopefully vote to support -- President Obama’s engagement in a war on ISIS.
“Ultimately, the solution to ISIS is a political solution,” the congressman said in an interview with The Macomb Daily. “The Sunni (Muslim) religious leaders have to rise up and condemn ISIS, to delegitimize them. The Sunni community … has to take on this behavior and stand up to it.”
After The Macomb Daily sought an interview with Land over a 5-day period on the subject of U.S. military action against ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, the paper received a statement from the Land campaign:
“Terri Lynn Land supports confronting the terrorist threat from ISIS without putting U.S. combat boots on the ground. However, the president needs to seek new authorization from the Congress for expanded military operations. She also has serious reservations about arming and training Syrians.
“The problem is that the president has known about this lethal threat for at least a year and just recently announced a strategy. During that time, the threat to our country has grown, and we are less safe because of it. The president’s failed foreign policy and lack of leadership has allowed the influence of ISIS and other extremists to grow.”
Peters also opposes the introduction of U.S. ground troops into the conflict, which extends from northern Iraq to eastern Syria and threatens to spill over into neighboring Turkey. He voted for funds to arm and train the “moderate” faction of rebels – largely the Free Syrian Army -- fighting ISIS and the Assad regime. But Peters also expressed a caveat.
“I’m very concerned that the (U.S.) vetting process for these rebels is conducted properly,” he said. “We have to proceed very cautiously.”
By voting to fund the rebels and then leave Washington without debating the air war against ISIS, also known as ISIL, lawmakers appear to be out of synch with the public.
A new CNN poll released on Monday found that 74 percent of Americans support the attacks from the air but 54 percent oppose aiding the Syrian rebels as a means of creating a ground force.
Adding to the headaches that Congress is trying to avoid by staying away from Capitol Hill, the CNN survey found a majority of voters oppose sending U.S. ground troops into the fight but three-fourths say it is likely that such a deployment will become inevitable.
What’s more, 91 percent said ISIS militants represent a security threat to the United States – with a mix of responses that labeled the jihadi group as a “very,” “fairly” or “somewhat” serious threat to the nation.
Peters said Monday Arab military troops in Syria should be an option once the impact of air strikes diminishes.
“I think that’s a very real option. We need the Sunni Arab nations to play a role,” he said.
The Obama administration is relying upon a strategy that has created a multi-nation coalition of support to help the Iraqi military and the “peshmerga” forces of the Kurds in northern Iraq to battle ISIS on the battlefield.
The air campaign, responsible for more than 250 sorties, includes five Arab allies who have made varying degrees of commitment – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Quatar.
The European allies in this united front are France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.
Over the weekend, the U.S.-led force bombed oil refineries controlled by ISIS after hitting key assets of the terror group last week on both sides of the porous Iraq-Syria border. According to the Associated Press, the militants accumulate an estimated $3 million a day by selling refined oil on black markets.
As Land and Peters battle for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, military matters and foreign policy have played a minimal role in the campaign.
In particular, Land, the former Michigan secretary of state, has not given media interviews on matters overseas. She has declined to say how she would have voted on the Senate measure that authorized funding for the rebels.
A year ago, when President Obama proposed missile strikes on Syria after the Assad regime launched chemical weapons attacks that killed more than 1,400 of its people, the Grand Rapids area Republican said in a Sept. 5, 2013, statement that Obama had failed to make “a compelling case to justify military intervention.”
A year later, after gruesome videos surfaced online of an ISIS executioner in Syria beheading two American journalists, Land issued a Sept. 10, 2014, statement that said the president “has known about this lethal (ISIS) threat for at least a year” but failed to act.
A few days later, Heather Swift, Land’s campaign spokeswoman, issued a clarification that said: “supporting attacks to destroy ISIS is far different from military intervention in a civil war.”
As for Peters, a year ago the three-term congressman spoke out against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attacks. But the lawmaker, who has a bloc of Syrian-American voters in the Oakland County portion of his district, never took a stand for or against Obama’s plan for military retaliation
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