|
|
Chris Christie on War & Peace |
CHRISTIE: Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it. A no-fly zone means a no-fly zone. That's what it means. See, maybe because I'm from New Jersey, I just have this kind of plain language hangup. But I would make very clear--I'd say to Vladimir Putin, "Listen, there's a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you." And yes, 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.
PAUL: Well, I think if you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate. Russia already flies in that airspace. If we announce we're going to have a no-fly zone, it is a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for World War III.
CHRISTIE: ISIS doesn't seem to be concerned about civilian casualties. We need to get real about this; we need to bring our allies together and revise rules of engagement to make sure that what we're doing is taking on ISIS in a significant, direct way that will be effective. So, this administration has no credibility in giving us any type of assessment of how this is going. We have the attacks in Mali now. Obama said al Qaeda was on the run. Obviously, that's wrong as well.ÿ
And they're building those artificial islands in the South China Sea and the president, up until recently, wouldn't sail a ship within 12 miles or fly a plane over it. I'll tell you this, the first thing I'll do with the Chinese is I'll fly Air Force One over those islands. They'll know we mean business.
A: Let's talk the facts of the deal. We shouldn't be getting the hyperbole. The fact that we have to wait 24 days to inspect a site if the Iranians object is outrageous. That would be like me getting a search warrant, coming to somebody's house who I think is committing a crime and saying, here, I have got a search warrant, I will be back in 24 days to search.
Q: Well, if it was a radioactive crime, the inspectors say that they would be able to discern whether or not there was radioactive material there 24 days later.
A: The president promised any time anywhere. And you cannot tell me that, in 24 days, the Iranians cannot move the elements of cheating from one area to another.
On Israel, Christie has criticized President Obama's treatment of Israel during his tenure as president. In 2014, he apologized for using the term "occupied territories" to refer to West Bank.
In April, Christie said that the U.S. must be ready to send American troops to fight Islamic State. In May, Christie criticized President Obama's handling of U.S. defense policy and said he would expand the American military. Christie said that invading Iraq in 2003 was the wrong choice, knowing what we know today
CHRISTIE: You know, I'm the governor of New Jersey. There a lot of people who are significantly better briefed on this than I am. And I think when guys like me start to shoot off on opinions about this kind of stuff, it's really ill-advised. So I'll leave it to Secretary Kerry and the folks that are in charge of this to make decisions about where we go. And then once they put something together, if they do, then I'll make a judgment on that. But it's just I'm not the right person to be asking that question to, with all due respect.
Q: But you're a national political figure. You're a leader in the Republican Party. You may someday run for president. Do you have a view about whether Iran should continue to enrich uranium?
CHRISTIE: Like I said, I think the folks who are involved in this on a day to day basis should be making those kind of opinions known publicly. I'm just not going to engage in that.
Americans and Israelis both believe in free enterprise, accountability, in transparency, and in rewarding excellence. We both believe in the rule of law and limits on the power of the state. We both believe in peace through strength.
Since September 2000, 1,218 Israeli civilians have been killed in terror attacks. That would be the equivalent of over 48,000 Americans murdered by terrorists in the same period.
[Washington policymakers should] tell the truth about the difficulty of the solutions. We need to speak that truth out loud. It makes us uncomfortable. It is a difficult set of words to string together, but we know that ignoring it will not make it go away, any more than ignoring our problems at home will make them go away either. America needs no introduction, but it is time that we start to live up to our greatness again, by telling the truth to each other and being willing to listen to those hard truths. There is simply nothing more important if America wants to continue to lead a free and hopeful world.
A: You know, as the governor of New Jersey, I got to tell you, I'm not going to put my judgment in place of the president of the United States who is briefed on this much more extensively than I am. And so I'm just not going to go there with that.
Q: You said that you wouldn't have pulled troops out.
A: I'm not a nation-building guy. And I do think that we have achieved a lot of what we wanted to achieve in Afghanistan, especially after the murder of bin Laden. But he knows a lot more about this than I do. I'm not going to go down that road.
A: You know, I wouldn't do it now, but I would be guided by what our military advisers told us to do. But I do think that capturing bin laden and killing Bin Laden was one of the real goals of the original Afghanistan intervention. and I'm not a nation-building kind of guy.
Q: But Americans have to be by default the world's policemen. and a lot of Americans I talked to are getting a bit fed up with spending all this money when there are so many problems at home, on being the world's policemen. There are other superpowers emerging. Would you like to see a spreading of that load going forward where America's not the go-to country? For military support, for helping out with despotic regimes and so on?
Q: Well, America's always got to be the leader in that regard.
Q: Does it have to be?
A: I think it does.