Ex-Marine lawmaker: ISIS is ‘a bunch of guys wearing pajamas’

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) on Tuesday said the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) does not pose a direct threat to the U.S. homeland.
 
“ISIS in Iraq and Syria is not an existential threat to us. They’re not going to harm the United States,” Hunter, a Marine Corps veteran, told Fox News. “They’re bad guys, yes, but a bunch of guys wearing pajamas pushing up logs, they are not an existential threat to us like North Korea is, like Iran is, like Pakistan is.”

{mosads}Hunter made his comments the same day the Obama administration confirmed that an American, Douglas McAuthur McCain, was killed over the weekend fighting for the militant group.

U.S. officials and lawmakers from both sides of aisle have expressed concern that ISIS has inspired potentially thousands of people with Western passports to join their ranks so that they might carry out an attack back home.

“The only threat that lies with them is that they can get people back into the United States to do harm to us here and commit acts of terror,” according to Hunter, who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“You’re always going to have disaffected youth. You’re always going to have that pull to join something greater than yourself,” Hunter said. “People like me join the United States Marine Corps; people like McCain join ISIS.”

Hunter said the administration should immediately secure the U.S. southern border to block potential attackers from entering the country undetected and begin denying visas “in totality” to people from the Middle East.

He also said the U.S. should work with ally countries like the United Kingdom, France and Germany to make sure that they’re doing a better job of “screening the people that they have to screen, so that they don’t unwittingly allow bad guys to come over here from their country.”