Tuesday, September 25, 2012 12:49 PM
By: Jim Meyers and John Bachman
Congressman Allen West tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview that the attacks on American embassies constitute an “act of War” and the Obama administration misled the public about the deadly attack in Libya.
The Florida Republican also says the administration’s policies on Iran and military spending are “emboldening” our enemies.
Watch the exclusive interview here.
And he warns that if candidates continue to win elections by promising voters the most government benefits, “this country will collapse.”
West was first elected in 2010 and is a member of the Tea Party Caucus. He is also an Army veteran who served for more than 20 years, with postings in several combat zones, and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Rep. West spoke to Newsmax on Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Fla., at the Hiring Our Heroes jobs fair for military veterans, Guard, and Reserve members, and military spouses.
Iran has reportedly test-fired missiles over the Strait of Hormuz aimed at sinking warships, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to provoke Israel and the United States. Asked if some kind of military action is imminent, West — a member of the Committee on Armed Services — says: “You have to have a military action because weakness is provocative and in that part of the world, where I spent about 40 months in combat zones, they only understand strength and might.
“When you continue to see the type of reticent response that you see coming out of our administration, when they know that we’re talking about sequestration [requiring deep cuts in military spending], that’s an enticement to them. You see what is happening right now is an emboldening of our enemies and adversaries, and we’re confusing and seemingly abandoning our allies.”
President Obama has not scheduled bilateral meetings with any world leaders while he’s in New York for the United Nations General Assembly gathering, yet he is appearing on TV’s “The View.”
West comments: “It’s amazing to me when you think about what happened on 9/11, just a few weeks ago. You had sovereign U.S. territories, which is what an embassy and a consulate is, attacked, our flag torn down and a radical Islamic flag raised. We had an ambassador who was killed. We had a fighter squadron commander killed in Afghanistan. We had six carrier jets destroyed. And the president goes off to Las Vegas. He goes and parties with Jay-Z and Beyoncé. He goes on David Letterman’s show.
“Now is a time when we should be showing leadership. Now is a time when you should be talking to world leaders and telling them how you’re going to stand up and confront this blatant attack. This is an act of war against our country. We should not be sending [money] to Pakistan to apologize nor putting our First Amendment rights on the chopping block.
“So I’m very concerned about the response that we see coming out of the White House. I’m very concerned that [he] would say that this was all because of a video, which most of us knew behind the scenes that was not the case, and now the entire country knows.”
The White House and State Department at first insisted the embassy attacks were a response to the anti-Muslim video, but now have changed course and said the attack in Libya was a coordinated terror operation.
“Absolutely they were misleading the public,” West declares.
“Eleven days before this happened, the Egyptian intelligence put out a warning letter about some problems there at the embassy. It was printed in the Jerusalem Post on 9/11. The consulate in Benghazi had been attacked five or six times. We knew that [Libyan militia group] Ansar al-Sharia was aligned with al-Qaida. The head of Ansar al-Sharia was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2007. So just add up all the pieces.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is meeting with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the leader of Muslim Brotherhood. Asked if he expects her to tell him our financial aid for Egypt is in jeopardy, West tells Newsmax: “I would expect the president to tell President Morsi that. I would expect the president who is the commander in chief to stand up and do that and not send out the secretary of state to do that.
“We should cut off that aid to Egypt. We should relook at the aid we’re sending to Libya. We have to have conditions on these things. We should look at what we’re doing in Yemen. We should look at what is going on in Sudan, Pakistan.
“We need to take a very harsh stance. The fact that you have a Pakistani minister offering $100,000 for a hit on this guy that did that Monty Python-esque video is insane. We need the president to stand up. Foreign policy is not just about killing one person, Osama bin Laden. Foreign policy is about the relationships that you have with other leaders — those who are your friends and those who are not your friends.”
Regarding sequestration, the House has passed West’s bill requiring the president to state his priorities for what military spending should be cut and when.
West says he is “absolutely not” satisfied with the president’s response.
“First of and foremost, we should not get to this point. The president said in his nomination speech at the Democratic Convention that he wanted to have the greatest and the strongest military in the world but his actions speak against that.
“We know that the thing called sequestration came out of the Obama administration. This is where it’s gotten us. If you’re the commander in chief, you should not want to see 200,000 men and women out onto the streets, especially in light of what you’ve seen happen over the last two years.
“But if we are able to win the White House, win the Senate and expand our majority in the House on November 6, that gives us a little bit of a moral high ground going towards a lame duck session to really start working on tax reform to make sure that we don’t head toward that fiscal cliff, and sequestration’s a part of that.”
West has spoken about the unsustainable nature of the entitlement system that Mitt Romney criticized on the so-called 47 percent tape.
To rein in that system, “the most important thing is to expand the opportunity society and not the dependent society,” West observes.
“What we’re doing here today with the Hiring Our Heroes jobs fair is exactly what I said. Government does not create jobs, government creates the opportunities job creators look for to provide employment opportunities.
“If we continue to grow a class of individuals that realizes they can vote their own largess from the public treasury by promoting the people that promise them the most benefits, this country will collapse, our fiscal policy will collapse. That’s the road we’re heading down.”
He adds that “62 percent of the federal government’s budget is net interest on the debt, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We’ve got to protect those programs and systems, we have to reform them and make sure that they continue on. Medicare is bankrupt in 2024 and nine years after that, Social Security.
“We’ve had almost 9.4 million Americans going into poverty in just the last two and a half years, and a 46 percent increase in food stamps recipients. I mean the federal government is using taxpayer money to run radio and TV ads for people to go on food stamps. That’s creating a dependent society, not an opportunity society.”
As for West’s re-election campaign, he is squaring off against Democrat Patrick Murphy, a political newcomer West calls “the emptiest of empty suits.
“I’m not running against anybody. There’s a name on the ballot and you have never heard him say anything about any of the prevailing issues.”
One poll shows the race as a dead heat and Democrats have made West a major target. But the congressman says simply: “You don’t see me shaking.”
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To read another article by Allen West, click here.
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