Ted Cruz, charlatan [View all]

[applegrove]

Ted Cruz, charlatan

By Dana Milbank at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ted-cruz-charlatan/2015/05/27/7d855de8-04a8-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html?hpid=z2

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As he prepared for his presidential run over the last year or so, a hawkish Sen. Ted Cruz has said U.S. policy in the Middle East and elsewhere is a mess because of President Obama’s weakness — particularly his failure to enforce his own “red line” after the Syrian regime used chemical weapons.

“A critical reason for [Vladimir] Putin’s aggression has been President Obama’s weakness,” the Texas Republican said in a typical appearance, on ABC News last year. “You’d better believe that Putin sees that in Syria,” he added. “Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line.”

This takes quite a lot of chutzpah, even by Cruz standards. It’s true that Obama didn’t enforce his red line in Syria — in large part because Cruz rallied opposition to bombing Syria.

I was reminded of Cruz’s hypocrisy this week by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who served three tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan as an Air Force pilot. Kinzinger, who favors a muscular foreign policy, was one of a small group of House Republicans leading the effort to give Obama authority to bomb Syria in 2013 — but they were undone when Cruz began declaring that bombing the Syrian regime would make the United States “al-Qaeda’s air force.”



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