Sen. Joni Ernst on ISIS Strategy: “has not been defined” by Obama

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Frank Gaffney: It is a pleasure to welcome, I believe for the first time to this radio microphone, a woman I’ve gotten to know a little bit in her previous life, when she was running for her present job. She is now a United States Senator representing the people of Iowa. At the time she was a candidate, she has been both then and now Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army’s National Guard, and a woman who had experience commanding a company in Kuwait and Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it’s a great privilege to say hello to Senator Joni Ernst. Welcome Senator, thank you for taking a few minutes to talk with us.

Sen. Joni Ernst: Great to be with you Frank, thanks so much.

FG: I’m anxious to hear about some of the insights from your recent return to your old theater of operations. You were on a congressional delegation led by Senator Mitch McConnell. What were the principle takeaways from that visit?

JE: Right, this was the first time I had been back to that theater since my deployment with the Iowa Army National Guard. From 2003-2004 I served in Kuwait and Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it’s concerning to me because I don’t see that we have gained so much in the past 14-13 years or so with our involvement, initially starting in Afghanistan and then Iraq, and our troops our really confused right now regarding our mission over there because the rules of engagement of course are very different, and it doesn’t allow them to effectively engage what we consider to be our enemy there, ISIS, which has risen up in the past number of years. They don’t know what our follow on mission will be should we happen to defeat ISIS, so even the leaders throughout that region that we met with are very concerned. They ask us what is your strategy in the United States? What is your strategy for defeating ISIS, for maintaining stable governments, and to be honest we don’t have a strategy that has not been clearly defined by our President.

FG: It doesn’t seem to be improving either. There’s been increasing sense that that’s the case and yet while the President is now putting a small number of special operators into Syria, it isn’t evident that there’s been a breakthrough in terms of understanding of what their supposed to do or how they’ll achieve success. In your course of your travels and then when you came back you raised these questions afresh, including with some of our senior leadership in the Pentagon, has there been any greater sense since you returned that there are good answers to these questions?

JE: No, there have not been any direct answers as to whether it’s strategy in the Middle East, whether it is working more to arm our Kurdish partners, the Iraqi Kurds have been very good friends to American service men and women, and have helped us combat ISIS and other threats in that region; great partners for over two decades, three decades, so I have worked very hard to try and directly arm our Kurdish partners there in Iraq. Of course the administration has pushed back heavily on that.

FG: Because they’re insisting on all of the assistance flowing through the central government in Baghdad?

JE: Correct, and we still see a slow down the way the administration has described the logistics chain going through Baghdad is not what we actually saw on the ground when we were traveling through that region, so still have a number of great concerns. We need to make sure that our friends and allies are receiving the arms, the ammunition, the equipment that they have been promised. So that continues to be an issue.

FG: One of the ways in which you’ve been trying to encourage that of course is through a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, which the President recently vetoed. You’ve decried that action quite understandably. Where do you think things stand Senator, I know you were jiggering the numbers to try to accommodate the President, but are we likely to see that Bill now signed into law including with this important provision regarding the Kurds?

JE: I am very hopeful that President Obama will sign the new NDAA. It was, I think, outrageous that he vetoed the NDAA that we sent to him earlier. We have very complex security issues you know stemming from what we see going on in the Middle East, what we see with the rise of China. You know so many threat our there that the President would actually reject measures that had very strong policy in it, issues that supported service men and women and he pushed back on that. We do think that we will sign that the NDAA that we send to him next, but again there’s just so much going on that our Commander in Chief would outright reject measures that actually work for our military men and women and their families, our veterans was just appalling to me.

FG: Well, one provision of course that he indicated in the last go around with his veto was the prohibitions on moving personnel, the detainees I should say not personnel, detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States. It isn’t clear that that’s still hanging him up but it also seems that he intends to just go and ahead and do it no matter what the law says. What are your thoughts on that Senator Ernst?

JE: It’s very disturbing because many of us believe the reason that we have these detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is because they are a national security risk. We do not want those detainees on American soil and so we will continue to push back heavily against the President, but I will tell you that it does seem that he is intent on following through with this hollow campaign promise, just something to stir people up, from years and years ago. I don’t know that it truly serves a purpose moving them from Cuba onto American soil. You know it’s very frustrating.

FG: It serves one purpose, the purpose is increasing the danger to the country I’m afraid. You know on previous programs I’ve had Judge Michele Mukasey, the former Attorney General, and Andy McCarthy, a Federal Prosecutor, I’m sure you know both of them and they make no bones about it that there is a real possibility that judges in Article Three Courts of this country may well spring these guys from prison for whatever reason and so it really is a national security threat. We appreciate your opposition to it. Let me ask you finally Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, if I may, about something that your I know tracking. We’ve talked about it in the in connection with your responsibilities not only on Armed Services Committee, but also on the Homeland Security Committee in the Senate and that is the vulnerability of our electric grid. I kind of think of this as a potential kill shot whether it’s at the hands of the Islamists, or other foreign nations, or even mother nature for that matter. You’ve been helpful I know in getting some legislation through the committee the so-called Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. How important is it to address this as you see it and do you think we might get that Bill through the Senate in the full measure?

JE: Well I would love to see this move forward of course and I think it is just going back I think it is very important that we are protecting all of our resources here in the United States. Our electrical grid of course, cyber security is an ever increasing issue with the United States where we have certain vulnerabilities, so we have a number of different areas that we really do need to start focusing on and making sure that they are protected. If we should have part of our electrical grid go down that would harm so many people across the United States depending on how widespread it would be. There’s just so much that we need to consider in an age where we rely heavily upon the grid, we rely upon the internet, we rely on so many different things than we did many years ago, so this is all part of the infrastructure that we need to make sure is protected so that we are protecting our American citizens.

FG: Yeah, it’s the most critical of critical infrastructures it seems to me and your absolutely right we’ve got to be clear that there are enemies of this country abroad in the world and some of them are putting their sights on this critical infrastructure I’m afraid and with it the lives of millions of your constituents and others in this country. Senator we’re going to have to let you go I know you’ve got a day job to attend to. We appreciate very much your spending a little bit of time with us and thanks for what your doing on the Armed Services Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, and come back to us again soon we’ve go much more to talk needless to say in all these areas and educating the public about what your doing is of vital importance I’m sure to you as to the future of our country. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa God bless you, keep up the good work, come back to us again very soon.