Cruz warm to bombing IS, cold to ousting Assad

WASHINGTON — Days after surging into second place in national polling for the Republican primary, Sen. Ted Cruz attempted to appeal to both the hawkish and dovish factions of his party, emphasizing a muscular military response to terrorist threats and a reluctance to advance regime change in the Middle East.

In a nearly hour-long address Thursday at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank, the presidential hopeful vowed to defeat Islamic State by “carpet bombing” the parts of Iraq and Syria controlled by the Islamist terror group and arming Kurdish forces.

Cautioning against taking a “side in the Syrian civil war,” Cruz indicated that Middle East dictators could serve as important allies in fighting the growing extremist presence in the region.

He stressed the condition of Libya — which he called a “chaotic war zone ruled by radical Islamic terrorists” — after the toppling of its long-standing dictator Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011, assisted through American military intervention under the leadership of President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

He also cited the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt as a further example of regime change yielding a result worse than the situation that had existed beforehand.

“We will not win by replacing dictators, as unpleasant as they may be, with terrorists who want to destroy America,” Cruz said,” likening Gaddafi’s role in the Libyan political dynamic to that of Bashar Assad in Syria now. “For as bad as Assad was, and is, radical jihadis patrolling Syria would be a significant turn for the worse.”

Though the first-term Texas senator broke no new ground in the policy prescriptions he articulated, the speech comes at a critical moment for Cruz’s campaign, as he recently climbed to second place in the polls behind real estate mogul Donald Trump, according to a survey conducted by CBS and The New York Times.

Since Trump announced his presidential candidacy in June, Cruz has refused to criticize his rival and the rhetoric that has inflamed his controversial campaign — a move that political commentators and analysts have said reflects Cruz’s strategy to attract Trump’s base of support in the event that his campaign implodes.

Despite the bipartisan and international condemnation that resulted from Trump’s proposal this week to ban Muslims’ entry into the United States, he remains the Republican front-runner with 35 percent of the party’s support.

Cruz, who is polling at 16 percent, delivered his address — designed to outline his foreign-policy agenda — as recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have made foreign policy and national security an increasingly central part of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The next presidential debate, which will be among Republicans, is due to take place December 15 in Las Vegas.