Ernst says president, country need the will to destroy ISIS

CEDAR RAPIDS - Sen. Joni Ernst expressed little confidence Friday in whatever strategy the president might have to thwart recent terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere.

The Iowa Republican also told Daybreak Rotary Club in Cedar Rapids the United States needs to be part of a forceful and coordinated response to the ISIS threat here and abroad. The freshman Republican spoke as French and Mali special operations forces in Mali were repelling a terrorist attack in which hotel patrons were taken hostage.

Ernst, who led an Iowa Army National Guard company in Kuwait and Iraq will be drilling with her unit this weekend, said the U.S. and its allies must attack the root cause of terrorism - the chaos in the Middle East.

'I know people are focused on what do we do for the refugees,” she said, acknowledging that the world is facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. 'It's horrible … those people are fleeing for their lives.

'But I'm going to turn it right back where it needs to go,” Ernst said, telling the Rotarians that she was in the Middle East earlier this fall and ISIS 'is spreading, folks, and we're not doing a darned things about it.”

It's the instability in the Middle East, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad terrorizing his own citizens that is causing the refugee migration to Europe.

'That gives opportunity to ISIS to infiltrate into these refugee groups and create chaos. That's what we saw in Paris,” she said.

Despite that, Ernst said President Barack Obama is 'resistant - very resistant - to moving away from whatever his strategy is now.”

'If you remember, just a couple of hours prior the Paris attacks he said we had ISIS contained,” Ernst said. 'It's pretty evident we don't.”

The U.S. needs to be part of a coalition of Arab nations, NATO and others, Ernst said, 'to move forward with actually destroying ISIS. That's what we have to do because we're not containing it, not even degrading ISIS.”

'We just have to have the will to do it,” she said.