January 2nd, 2016

In the eyes of U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green, President Barack Obama and his cabinet have made several missteps when it comes to foreign policy and national security issues.
When it comes to the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, Latta has seen what he believes to be several lapses in judgment by the current administration.
“You’ve got Benghazi and the four Americans killed there,” he said during a visit to The Lima News. “Then you’ve the president touting what was going on in Yemen, and now you’ve got Al Qaeda and all those groups fighting there. Then in Syria, Assad was using chemical weapons against his own people who were fighting against him, and the president drew those red lines in the sand, and nothing ever happened with them. Now you’ve got ISIS, or ISIL, in Syria and Iraq, and they want to establish a country to encompass Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and even a little bit of Turkey.”
Dealing with the Islamic State has been a major failure of this administration, according to Latta.
“The president said that ISIS was a ‘JV team,’” he said. “Now they are a major threat. Twelve hours before the Paris attacks, he said that ISIS was contained.”
“The president has let events shape him instead of him shaping events,” he said.
Latta would also like to see a greater coalition with allies in the region, but he does not see that happening with the current president.
“The president believes that the biggest threat today is global warming,” he said. “We need to understand that there is a war going on and treat it as such. We can’t keep cutting our military.”