Florida Rep. Mike Waltz (R) has stood as one of President Joe Biden's (D) sharpest critics on the decision to withdraw the military from Afghanistan. He argues that the withdrawal left a "power vacuum," which has led to disastrous results. In an op-ed for FOX News, Rep. Waltz warns of the looming threat that ISIS poses if the president doesn't shift his stance on the border.
Rep. Waltz, who endorsed President Donald Trump (R) during the Republican primaries, draws a distinction between the incumbent and the Republican challenger. Accusing the incumbent's "ideologically rigid open-border policies" for leaving the United States "wide open to the growing threat of terror abroad," he calls on the president to reinstate the Trump-era Title 42 policy.
President Biden called the withdrawal an "extraordinary success," but Rep. Waltz disagrees, countering that the "power vacuum" that was left in Afghanistan leaves the U.S. "with an almost identical threat we faced from ISIS in 2014."
"Within three years, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) filled the power vacuum left behind by the U.S. and established a caliphate the size of Indiana to terrorize the region and inspire attacks across Europe and the U.S.," he writes, adding that "in 2015, two Islamic extremists murdered 14 people in San Bernadino, California and the attack was hailed by ISIS. Six months later, a terrorist who pledged allegiance to ISIS killed 49 in the Pulse Nightclub attack in Orlando. We witnessed a wave of Islamic terrorist attacks across Europe."
With newer attacks attributed to ISIS being reported, Rep. Waltz echoed Republican outcry, writing that "the Biden administration’s refusal to take our border security seriously is making us increasingly vulnerable to a terrorist attack and there is little we can do to stem exporting of terror out of Afghanistan. "
"It's going to take his clear-eyed approach to radical Islamic extremism and a real commitment to secure the border to fix this issue. Biden’s continual refusal to acknowledge the mistakes he made has only emboldened global terrorism – and thanks to his open-borders ideology, we are now even less safe at home."
