Last night in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, Texas Senator Ted Cruz slammed President Obama's handling of ISIS and the beheadings of two American journalists as "unserious." He also slammed Obama for operating on a "photo-op" foreign policy agenda not tied to protecting "vital national security interests to the United States" and said ISIS has declared war on the U.S.
"Unfortunately from the beginning of this we have seen President Obama being fundamentally unserious about this [ISIS]. He dismissed ISIS at the outset as the Junior Varsity, that turned out to be very wrong then last week he told us 'we have no strategy' to the surprise of nobody," Cruz said. "At this point we have seen ISIS declare war on the United States. They are crucifying Christians. They are beheading children. They have beheaded two American journalists and they have done so on the world stage pledging an intent to take jihad to America."
President Obama is set to address the nation Wednesday night about what his administration is planning to do to combat ISIS. Cruz said in the same interview Obama must come to Congress to obtain approval for new military action, which would require him to lay out a coherent plan and strategy moving forward.
"The value of Obama coming to Congress is it forces the President to articulate clear military objective," Cruz said. "If we don't act now we will see another horrific act of terror on the homeland."
Cruz has introduced legislation that would ban Americans fighting with ISIS from reentering the United States.
"There are over 100 Americans right now who have gone and are fighting along side ISIS," Cruz said. "The legislation I introduced today in the Senate amends existing law to provide that taking up arms and fighting along side ISIS constitutes a renunciation of United States citizenship so that we can't have people who have joined the terrorists using U.S. passports to come back to commit acts of here at home. It is my hope that we will see bipartisan cooperation passing this legislation."