CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Islamic State Strategy

Interview

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BALDWIN: All right, Dana Bash, thank you so much. Robust, aggressive, thank you, from Washington for me.

And let's talk to a member of Congress. Republican Congressman Mike Turner joins me now from Capitol Hill. He is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Congressman, welcome.

REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: So we know a briefing just wrapped up between administration officials, specific members of Congress, hours ahead of the president's big speech tonight. Have you heard anything coming out of that meeting, sir?

TURNER: Nothing yet, but I think certainly everyone's looking for the president tonight to make the case that ISIS is a direct threat to the United States, that he intends to use military force and resolve for to destroy ISIS, that he's going to look to a broader coalition. The United States not just going alone. People certainly expect that it's going to include, as Secretary Hagel has said, military action both in Iraq and in Syria.

BALDWIN: We are hearing about this blank check that the president, you know, wants from Congress to fight ISIS. What are you hearing, Congressman Turner, about that? What specifically are you hearing as far as how that will be distributed financially to the fight overseas?

TURNER: You know, I think overall you heard from Congress the great frustration that the president has not had a plan. And because of that, any congressional action has been, you know, premature to even discuss speculatively. You know, what will Congress do if the president does x or y? Tonight he's going to have to lay it out and from that point Congress obviously will take action. But I hope he goes more beyond just the ISIS issue to really the root cause that we have here. If you look at chapter 12 of the 9/11 Commission Report, they specifically state that this is not just an al Qaeda or an Osama bin Laden threat to the United States, it's Islamic extremism, Islamic terrorism. The president, in his speech in Cairo, laying out his strategy for Iraq, said that even in addition to pulling the troops out of Iraq, he was going to commit to holding Islamic extremism at bay and supporting that a territorial integrity and democratic Iraq. He needs to get back to those things, not just an issue of how are we going to militarily attack and hold ISIS back.

BALDWIN: But what about the finances? You know you hear from someone like Senator Carl Levin saying he -- I believe the word was "flexibility." He's OK with maybe this notion of a blank check and the flexibility because we know, of course, the fight against terrorism is evolving. It was Senator McCain from, you know, your party who says, well, if there is no goal, if there is no strategy, then it would be pretty tough to get that kind of money from taxpayers.

TURNER: Well, absolutely. I think no one looks to a blank check. They look to what a strategy is, what a plan is. They look to the president to recommit himself to seeing that Islamic extremism is the threat to the United States and what is the strategy and plan for Congress to take action to authorize funding for this and to appropriate funding. I don't think anybody wants to just say, you know, President Obama, certainly, whatever you want to do, wherever this goes without any consultation with Congress, you should have approval.

BALDWIN: Congressman, you brought up 9/11 a minute ago. It's hard not to talk about it. I was just walking around ground zero just this weekend and I know you -- you were just part of a classified briefing, you know, on worldwide threats what yesterday. What can you share here?

TURNER: It's a grim picture. You know, I was speaking yesterday to Representative Klein from Minnesota and he suggested everyone go back to read chapter 12 from the 9/11 Commission Report because it lays out specifically where we are. If you take your eye off the ball, if you don't hold the pressure on Islamic extremism and terrorism, it's going to grow. It's not just an issue of al Qaeda or killing Osama bin Laden. That it's, in fact, looking at that as an existential threat to the United States and having a strategy to target it. The president has not. He withdrew our troops, let Iraq fall into, you know, the disarray that we see today. His strategy and plan has got to go far beyond ISIS. It's got to be recommitting the United States to a policy of addressing Islamic extremism and terrorism.

BALDWIN: Far beyond ISIS, I mean, who knows even how long it seems in a sense such an abstract concept. It's an enemy of which, you know, so much intelligence in Syria, the U.S. doesn't even have.

TURNER: Right. And well the - what - the president, because he's allowed so much time to elapse, has a difficulty here in putting his plan together because even if he degrades or compromises ISIS and their capabilities, who's going to go in and hold this land? Who's going to fill that gap in space? You know we certainly saw in Libya where the president had no post-Gadhafi regime plan, went in and did regime change. Libya is now in chaos. The president, if he doesn't have a post-ISIS plan, could similarly see that type of chaos envelope in Iraq. This is going to take great resolve on the parts of this president besides just limited air strikes.

BALDWIN: Just to push on that, just talking to Fareed Zakaria, who I consider pretty intelligent and knows a lot of things about the world, you know, and he wrote a piece recently in "The Washington Post" just sort of pushing back on that and saying, listen, even he was surprised to see this -- once all these dictators fell, once we saw the time post-Arab Spring, no one could have predicted what would have happened in Egypt and Libya and the like.

Congressman Mike Turner, I thank you so much for taking the time to come on with me.

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