louisiana’s Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal, who has been making one controversial remark after another in recent weeks, trained his guns on President Barack Obama on Monday, asserting that Obama is “unfit to be commander-in-chief”.
Jindal, who is contemplating a presidential run but figures low right now in popularity among a host of Republican aspirants, came up with the hard-hitting comment against Obama right in front of the White House - just after a meeting that he and other State Governors had with the President.
“The President has really disqualified himself to be our commander-in-chief,” Jindal told reporters as he attacked Obama for not identifying the present global threat as one posed by “radical Islam” and for more or less ruling out ground troops to tackle this threat.
“I take no joy in saying that,” Jindal said, adding: “There are many of us that are very concerned about the President’s unwillingness to call out radical Islamic terrorism and the threat that we face as a country.”
Separately, in a strongly-worded opinion piece for the conservative Fox News, Jindal wrote: “One of the defining military challenges of our time is the spread of radical Islamist terrorism, and President Obama has focused more on criticising America and lecturing the American people than on devising a plan to hunt down and kill these extremists.”
“Every day, Islamic State is expanding its atrocities, killing more innocent people, all while the President and his administration are refusing to admit we are at war, giving us history lessons about the Crusades, refusing to call out radical Islam as the root problem, and contending that jobs programs are the key to defeating terrorism,” he commented.
Stating that the American people “are not as dimwitted as you (Obama) seem to believe”, Jindal wrote: “Radical Islamic terrorists are cutting off people’s heads, killing children, crucifying people, and burning people alive, and we need to find jobs for themIJ” He attacked the State Department for reportedly commenting, “We cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.”
Finding fault with the President’s recent letter to the US Congress seeking Authorisation for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS, Jindal said: “The AUMF specifically prohibits the use of ground troops in defeating ISIS. There is simply no reason for us to provide comfort to our enemies by telling them what we will not do, ever.”
Obama’s opposition to deployment of ground troops is “not a military strategy”, but “a political strategy designed to appease the left in this country, which also happens to populate his entire administration”, Jindal charged, saying the President ought not to “hamstring” his military commanders “because of political pushback”.