Bachmann: Obama ‘first anti-Israel president’

Retiring Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) bashed the White House’s strategy on ISIS and called President Obama the “first anti-Israel president in American history” during a fiery speech Friday.

{mosads}Equating the White House with former secretary of State and presumed 2016 front-runner Hillary Clinton, the former presidential candidate criticized the administration for a slew of perceived failures, including the terrorist attacks on the Benghazi, Libya, and lifting sanctions on Iran. 

“In their fantasy world, a smaller, diminished, less powerful United States is somehow supposed to bring about global tranquility,” she said. “Well Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, we want our 1980s foreign policies back. Peace through strength!”

Bachmann spoke at the three-day Values Voter Summit in Washington primarily sponsored by the socially conservative Family Research Council. She’s in the midst of her farewell tour, before she leaves Congress at the end of 2014. 

The crowd was supportive, responding to many of her points with large cheers and a few standing ovations.

While Obama has repeatedly referred to terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as “not Islamic,” Bachmann said Islam is part of “their motivations for bringing about jihad.” She also panned the administration’s plan to use airstrikes and international partnerships without American ground troops and said that the nation should declare war on ISIS.

“The president asked Congress to follow him in a Vietnam-style, slow-walk response, and I said no,” she said. “Either the United States chooses to decisively defeat this brutal evil with every resource we have, or we are going to have to answer to the next generation: why we failed to defeat the totalitarian evil of our day.”

Addressing her post-congressional future, Bachmann told supporters that she would still remain heavily involved in issues “because there is too much at stake to sit on the sidelines.” And as for 2016, the 2012 presidential candidate said that she wasn’t worried about Clinton, who many experts see as the overwhelming favorite.

“We need to expose Hillary Clinton’s record of failure, and we will defeat her in 2016, of that I have no doubt,” she said.