In the wake of terrorist attacks on March 21, 2016, United States presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, March 22, proposed, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
Cruz, who famously said after the Paris attack in November 2015 that if he were President he would “carpet-bomb ISIS into oblivion,” apparently has no logical ideas related to how to conduct an operational offensive against ISIS.
How, exactly, would law enforcement “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized”? Cruz doesn’t say. This is because it is an absurd notion. I picture police cars driving around in neighborhoods where many Muslims live, perhaps in Detroit?, not knowing how else to respond to the orders given by Cruz.
During a news conference in Argentina on Wednesday, President Obama, referring to surveillance programs in Cuba, a country he had just left on a trip that then took him to Argentina. “As far as the notion of having surveillance of neighborhoods where Muslims are present, I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance,” Obama said, “which by the way, the father of Sen. Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free. The notion that we would start down that slippery slope makes absolutely no sense. It’s contrary to who we are. And it’s not going to help us defeat ISIL.”
Also on Wednesday, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told “CBS This Morning” that Cruz has “no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”
Apparently Cruz is also completely ignorant of American police officers who are also Muslim, those who serve and protect their communities.