A top House Republican issued a stinging rebuke of President Obama’s foreign policy during a speech on Monday morning, criticizing it as weak, unclear and naive.
“American foreign policy should not be guided by hollow rhetoric, unwise or moveable timelines, and unenforced red lines,” said Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) at the Virginia Military Institute.
Cantor criticized a recent interim agreement with Iran that’s supported by the Obama administration, saying it relieved pressure on Iran to change course on developing a nuclear program it claims is peaceful but could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
“Like all Americans, I hope to see Iran abandon its nuclear aspirations through peaceful negotiations, but hope is not a strategy,” he said.
Furthermore, Cantor said, the administration’s policy on Syria has signaled weaknesses to allies throughout the world.
“Threatening to act in Syria only to shrink back from the edge not only undermined our allies inside Syria and throughout the Middle East, it badly shook our allies in Asia.
Cantor said the U.S. must maintain a presence in Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission ends in 2014, and said it would be a “terrible mistake” for the U.S. to withdraw troops completely as it did in Iraq.
“Our hasty and total withdrawal squandered the hard-fought gains won by the military at such great cost,” he said.
