WASHINGTON — Less than a month into his first term as a U.S. Senator, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton is already proving to be one of the most hardline foreign policy hawks in the chamber.
Last week during an appearance on CNN, Cotton called for a new “war on Islamic terror,” saying the U.S. military must “get back on offense all around the world.”
“We can’t win the war on Islamic terror on defense, we have to win on offense,” Cotton told CNN. In a speech to The Heritage Foundation the day before, Cotton had compared the negotiations of the P5+1 (the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France, plus Germany) with Iran to the appeasement of Nazi Germany. He also said Obama was wrong not to send U.S. forces to intervene in Syria’s civil war.
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In a 2012 interview, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN that it was ambiguous to conclude that Iran is clearly set on weaponizing its nuclear technology. He also noted that economic sanctions, diplomacy, international cooperation and defensive preparedness were beginning to have an effect on Iran’s nuclear program.
“We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor and it’s for that reason I think that the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point,” Dempsey said.
A Pentagon spokesman told The Huffington Post last week that Dempsey’s 2012 assessment “is still accurate.”
