Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized President Obama’s vision for winding down the war on terrorism, using talk show appearances to accuse him of misunderstanding the threat in a way that will embolden unfriendly nations.
“We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What do you think the Iranians are thinking? At the end of the day, this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine.”
In his first major foreign policy address of his second term, Mr. Obama said last week that it was time for the United States to narrow the scope of its long battle against terrorists and begin a transition away from a war footing.
In addition to renewing his call to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he said he would seek to limit his own war powers. He also issued new policy guidelines that would shift the responsibility for drone strikes to the military from the Central Intelligence Agency, and said there would be stricter standards for such attacks.
Mr. Graham, a strong supporter of the drone program, said he objected to changing the standards. Separately, he called for a special counsel to investigate both the Justice Department, which has come under scrutiny for seizing journalists’ phone records, and the Internal Revenue Service, which has acknowledged that it unfairly targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Democrats, including Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, praised Mr. Obama for what they said was a necessary rebalancing of civil liberties and national security interests. “We have to balance our values,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.”
But at least two lawmakers — the current and former chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas and Peter T. King of New York — complained specifically about the president’s remarks about Guantánamo Bay.
Mr. McCaul warned against closing the detention center, especially if it meant moving prisoners to the United States. “Name me one American city that would like to host these guys,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”
More than half the remaining 166 detainees at Guantánamo Bay are Yemeni; of these, 56 have been cleared to go home. Mr. Obama has proposed repatriating detainees when he can, but will still face the thorny question of what to do several dozen men who cannot be prosecuted and who have been deemed to be too dangerous to release.
Mr. King, appearing with Ms. Wasserman Schultz on “This Week,” said the detention facility had been a success. “Many experts believe it did work,” he said, adding that he was “very concerned about sending detainees back to Yemen.” Noting that Mr. Obama had campaigned on a promise to close the prison, he said the president “could have done a lot more than he has done if he was serious about it rather than just moralizing.”
In calling for a special counsel, Mr. Graham said the Justice Department had begun to “criminalize journalism” and had engaged in “an overreach” in investigating leaks of classified national security information. He also complained of an “organized effort” within the I.R.S. to target political opponents of the president. “I think it comes from the top,” he said, although current and former I.R.S. officials have said Mr. Obama did not know of the targeting.
