If you could clone the GOPe’s idea of a “conservative” candidate — smooth, glib and all-in for amnesty — that candidate would look exactly like Marco Rubio. The inexperienced freshman senator (and where have we heard that phrase before?) is equally predictable in his foreign-policy prescriptions, as witness this sure-loser idea for defeating ISIS:
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Sunday that the only way to defeat the Islamic State is to deploy a ground force of Sunni Arabs aided by a limited number of U.S. special operators. “It’s the only way to do it. They have to be defeated by a ground force and have to be made up primarily of Sunnis,” said Mr. Rubio, who is competing for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
Mr. Rubio said he voted in 2013 against allowing Mr. Obama’s bid to use force against Syrian President Bashar Assad — who appeared to have crossed the White House’s “red line” by deploying chemical weapons — because he thought it would be counterproductive.
“I felt that airstrikes — and I still do — against Assad at the time would have been counterproductive,” he said. “He would have survived. He would have remained in power, and it would have strengthened his hand and allowed him to send the message to the world that he had taken on the United States and still held on. In fact, it may have rallied some in the Arab world to his side as a result of such a strike.”
Pace Sen. Rubio, the only way to defeat the Islamic State is not by enlisting other Muslims to fight against them, especially (of all people) Sunni Muslims. The Sunnis will follow the strong horse. No, the way to defeat ISIS is to be the strong horse and teach all of the Muslim world a lesson it won’t soon forget. The sooner Rubio drops out of the GOP race, the better.
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