Marco Rubio Promises ‘Humiliating Defeats’ on ISIS
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
By Katie Nicora 11/23/2015
GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio is advocating eye-for-an-eye retaliation against ISIS. The Florida Senator said Monday that U.S. victories against the extremist group should be videotaped and posted on Youtube to combat ISIS’ adept use of social media for propaganda and recruiting.
“I want the world to see how these ISIS leaders cry like babies when they’re captured,” he said in a town hall meeting in Iowa. “I want the world to see how these ISIS leaders, once captured, begin to sing like canaries if they survive.”
Despite this, Rubio’s plan to take down the group depends heavily on cooperation from other Middle Eastern forces. “The only way to defeat ISIS is for Sunni Arabs themselves to reject them ideologically and defeat them militarily,” he said. “They must be defeated on the ground with a ground force that is made up primarily of Arab Sunni fighters from Iraq, from Syria, but also from Jordan, from Egypt, from the Emirates, from Saudi Arabia.”
American “special operators” on the ground are also essential to the Republican candidate’s plan. Not just because adding U.S. troops will increase the number of soldiers battling the group, but because they can, “subject ISIS to high-profile, humiliating defeats, to sort of reverse this narrative that they’ve created that they are an invincible force.”
One of the most terrifying aspects of ISIS’ growth is their successful use of social media to gain supporters. They post and share high-quality propaganda and recruiting videos to sites such as Twitter and Youtube, allowing them to contact and woo would-be terrorists from all over the world.
Rubio believes the extremist group’s global reach is an especially poignant threat. In a phone interview with Fox News about the recent attack on Paris, he brought up the danger of “entrepreneurial” terrorists. “Were these individuals inspired online to take action?,” he asked. The Florida Senator said these individuals definitely “drew inspiration from ISIS and the teachings of ISIS and the information that ISIS makes available, but did they self-start on it? Did they go out and decide to do that independent of central command, because that’s what’s made ISIS so hard to deal with.”
Foreign policy– in particular, criticizing President Obama’s policies– has been a cornerstone of Rubio’s campaign. At a rally in Iowa on Saturday, he said Obama spends “more time attacking Republicans than talking about how he would attack ISIS.”