Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman says the United States is too self-assured that a major terrorist strike will not happen stateside.
“I think one of the things is that we have gotten too confident, because we have thwarted a lot of attacks and we’re not going to be subject to the things that Paris or Denmark or Belgium or the Middle East, you know, every week are subjected to,” he told The Daily Caller Wednesday night.
He explained, “It’s a real and present danger and we have a lot of dedicated professionals who are trying to thwart these attacks everyday and the intelligence services, obviously the military — God bless them. Thank God they’re there. You only have to make one mistake one time and I think we have to maintain our vigilance and not get complacent.”
Portman is particularly critical of the Obama administration for pulling out of Iraq in such a manner that left a vacuum of leadership in the country when the last U.S. soldier left.
“I just got back from Israel on Monday and it’s a dangerous and volatile part of the world over there and our disengagement from Iraq and the way we did it — precipitously, without leaving any trainers or intelligence or special operators has given ISIS the foothold — almost a third of Iraq now. That makes it even more dangerous,” he said.
Portman went further saying, “By having even more geography, that makes [ISIS] more dangerous to us here back home. So it’s partly, properly funding our military and our intelligence services. Part of it is that America has to play a leadership role around the world by projecting force appropriately.”
He added, “I’m not talking about boots on the ground, even, but by providing the intelligence and trainers as we are now starting to do for Iraq after the fact has an impact on the ability of ISIS to create a platform to attack the free world including us.”
The former Bush administration official believes that it will take a period of time after the Obama administration leaves the White House before a new administration can rebuild American intelligence and military assets.
He explained, “I think there will be another period as there was after the Clinton administration of us having to rebuild our national security interests structure and I think that’s pretty well acknowledged among defense experts on both sides of the aisle. In the shorter term, I think we have to look at sequestration and see if we can find some relief. We started that process in the budget.”
In the meantime Portman says in the long term that Congress must continue to “bulk up our defenses.”
“We’re going to have to look at our strategic objectives and look at building up our military around that.”