Photo by Steven Purcell
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) says U.S. foreign policy should be guided by three principles:
We should focus directly on protecting U.S. national security in the interest of the American people, we should speak with moral clarity, and we should always fight to win.
“Those are the principles that when the United States has followed, have protected the United States of America,” Cruz said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation in the annual Jesse Helms Lecture.
When it comes to Syria, Cruz said he believes that President Obama has violated those three simple principles.
“If you listen to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, the arguments for launching a military strike against Syria primarily derive from the need to defend a, quote, ‘international norm’ and to send a statement in defense of that international norm,” Cruz said.
Cruz said that sending a statement is not the job of our men and women in uniform. Instead, “It is the job of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to stand up and defend the United States of America: to kill our enemies and defend our national security.”
Cruz said that the Administration’s ambiguous messages increase the likelihood of military conflict. “Those messages can only have been taken as encouragement that the United States—that the President—will be less than vigorous in protecting our national security.”
America cannot afford to be weak, because as Cruz said, “When America doesn’t lead, the world is a much more dangerous place.”
Crystal Goodremote is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.
