Republican presidential hopefuls seeking a year-end boost in national polls clashed Tuesday night over regime change in Syria and the ongoing fight against ISIS amidst heightened security concerns in the US.
The debate comes in the wake of fatal shootings outside of Los Angeles in which authorities say one of two perpetrators pledged fealty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Real estate mogul and leader in national polls, Donald Trump defended his controversial proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the US, saying that it was not focused on a religion, but national security.
“We are not talking about isolation. We're talking about security,” he said.
Seemingly unconvinced, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said that Trump’s policy “will push the Muslim world, the Arab world away from us at a time when we need to re-engage with them to be able to create a strategy to destroy ISIS [Daesh].”
“Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners, but he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe,” he said.
Republican candidates attempted to one-up each other on security issues and the Syrian conflict.
“[Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad is one of the main reasons why ISIS even exists,” argued Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who favors Assad's ouster. “He has been so brutal toward the Sunni within Syria that he created the space that led to the people of Syria themselves to stand up and try to overthrow him. That led to the chaos which allowed ISIS to come in and take advantage of that situation and grow more powerful.”
But Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is vying with his Florida colleague for the number two spot behind Donald Trump, retorted that if Assad is ousted “the result will be ISIS will take over Syria”.
Asked if he was prepared to follow through with earlier comments that he would carry out indiscriminate air raids on ISIS’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, Cruz said: “You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops.”
“The object isn't to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists,” he said.
Amidst the sparring over Assad’s fate and the anti-ISIS campaign, divisions were laid bare on a potential no-fly zone that has become increasingly complicated by Russia’s independent air campaign in Syria.
Asked if he was prepared to down a Russian aircraft should it violate such an area, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that not only was he prepared, he “would do it”.
“A no-fly zone means a no-fly zone,” he said. “We would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.”
Cautioning against a potential conflagration with nuclear-armed Russia, Senator Rand Paul rebutted the New Jersey governor, saying that the proposal was “a recipe for World War III”.
“Russia already flies in that airspace. It may not be something we're in love with – the fact that they're there – but they were invited by Iraq and by Syria to fly in that airspace,” he said.
Even as the candidates sought to demonstrate their preparedness to guide America on the international stage, they also had to address how they would cope with the ramifications of foreign policy, particularly the ongoing refugee crisis caused by Syria’s civil war.
Christie doubled-down on his commitment to prevent Syrian refugees from entering the US, saying he wouldn't "allow any Syrian refugees in this country."
"I don't back away from that position for a minute," he said.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll on Tuesday estimated support for Trump among Republican sympathizers at 38 percent, six points higher than in November. Cruz jumped to second place at 15 percent.
