- April 26, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
The U.S. administration is doing a poor job of projecting strength, and dictatorial regimes sense weakness and are taking advantage of it, U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz said on Flagler Broadcasting's Free For All Friday radio program Dec. 10.
"I want to bring the troops home like anybody else. But terrorism hasn’t gone away; Al Qaeda and ISIS fully intend to hit us again. I do think we should have kept a small presence to keep a lid on all that."
— U.S. Rep. MICHAEL WALTZ
"With Iran racing towards a nuclear weapon, with Russian massing on Ukraine, China on the march, it's not good," he said. "And I think it should be no surprise; this is because our adversaries perceive weakness in this White House. ... Dictators are deterred by strength and emboldened weakness, and I think that's what we're seeing right now."
Waltz represents Florida's Sixth Congressional District, which includes Flagler County, Volusia County, and parts of Lake County and St. Johns County.
A Green Beret and colonel in the National Guard, he said he was pleased that Republicans and Democrats in Congress were able to agree to pass a $768 billion defense funding bill.
"We were able to come together on that, and I think that's incredibly important for the country," he said.
Speaking about the economic collapse in Afghanistan, Waltz said that the U.S. and European allies have been placed in the position of freezing the country's assets because of the Taliban takeover.
"Now we're in the terrible situation of keeping them frozen and literally letting the Afghan people, by the tens of millions, starve because their economy is collapsing, or release them knowing that terrorists, at a minimum are going to take some of it to the tune of millions if not billions of dollars that would be fueling terrorism around the world," he said.
Waltz has been particularly critical of the U.S.'s withdrawal from Afghanistan, where he served multiple combat tours, saying that the U.S. withdrawal leaves the homeland at risk for terrorism and sends a message that the U.S. will abandon its allies.
"I get it: Nobody wants endless wars," Waltz said. "... I want to bring the troops home like anybody else. But terrorism hasn’t gone away; Al Qaeda and ISIS fully intend to hit us again. I do think we should have kept a small presence to keep a lid on all that."
Waltz said that fighting the ideology of Islamic extremism will take time.
"Look at how long it took us to defeat the ideology of communism, fascism," he said. "... I want to fight it over there, not wait til it hits us here at home."
He paraphrased Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai's statement that what the extremists fear most is a girl with a book.
"It undermines their extremist ideology, their bastardization of Islam," Waltz said. "But that takes time, and when you have people constantly saying, '20-year war, 20-year war,' there was a a real erosion of support. I would point out, we've had ... soldiers in South Korea — we have 30,000 — been there 70 years. We've had Special Operations forces in Colombia, helping our ally there ... they've been there 40 years. So really, this is about American leadership and what does that look like."
He compared U.S. presence in Afghanistan to an insurance policy, and noted that there have been few U.S. troop deaths there in recent years.
"I think preventing attacks in the homeland was worth that cost in soldiers," Waltz said. "We were losing more in training accidents than we were in Afghanistan. But unfortunately, we didn't have a president that was willing to listen and explain that to people."
