Jennifer Rubin: Beware the anti-immigrant charlatans

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, as the saying goes. So it is not surprising that Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others on the right wing have made the Paris attacks into an immigration issue. It is all they know, and they will continue to bang the anti-immigrant drum until their last gasp on the presidential trail.

Trump plainly did not understand that Russia was not fighting the Islamic State nor that seizing oil fields in the territory controlled by the Islamic State would require tens of thousands of troops. He has not figured out that Syrian President Bashar Assad is fueling the Islamic State.

In short, Trump knows very little about foreign policy, but he knows a whole lot about xenophobia. Naturally, then, he wants not only to halt the flow of Syrian refugees (who fled for their lives from jihadists, just as Parisians did last week), but now he also says we should consider closing mosques. His ignorance of foreign policy is dwarfed by his ignorance of the Constitution.

Cruz is only marginally better. As Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., pointed out on Monday, Cruz “voted to weaken the U.S. intelligence programs just in the last month and a half. And the weakening of our intelligence gathering capabilities leaves America vulnerable. And that is exactly what’s happened.” He reiterated: “We have weakened the U.S. intelligence gathering capability through a combination of disclosures by a traitor, Edward Snowden, and also through the weakening in our own laws of important programs that now are being phased out, and as a result, will cost us the ability to gather actionable intelligence against elements operating in our territory.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made the same point this week.

Moreover, Cruz’s approach to jihadist terror has been incoherent. He denounces the president for refusing to admit we are at war with Islamic fundamentalists but dismisses the war in Syria, which houses the Islamic State, as a “civil war.” He rages at the Obama administration for lacking a strategy but refuses to acknowledge a larger U.S. contingent is required. If only he had realized Syria was a breeding ground for jihadists when he opposed U.S. military action to enforce the red line. Like President Obama, he got that one wrong. No wonder Cruz would rather scaremonger about refugees.

Christie hit the nail on the head in an interview Monday evening: “What we need to do is to fully arm with every capability they need, our intelligence officers and our law enforcement officers to be able to catch folks who are planning and plotting attacks against the American public before they happen.”

Jeb Bush likewise has sounded the call for restoring the metadata program, using massive force against the Islamic State (including sufficient ground forces) in concert with our allies and setting up a no-fly zone.

Christie, Rubio and Bush are all advancing a forceful, coherent plan for waging war against our deadly enemies. Their consistency on the issues allows them to speak confidently on the critical issues rather than toss shiny objects in the air, as others do, hoping the media and voters forget their well-documented inanities.

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Jennifer Rubin: Beware the anti-immigrant charlatans."