Larry Smith, an Iraq war veteran running for a congressional seat in Texas thinks President Obama should be sued for child abuse.
“I believe really, internationally, these families need to get together in international court and sue the Obama administration in a class action lawsuit for unilateral child abuse,” Smith told The Daily Beast, referring to the relatives of children currently in limbo after crossing into the United States from Mexico. “Whether it was incidental or accidental, they were the cause of it. They knew it was coming and they allowed it to happen.”
Smith attributes the administration’s alleged inaction to the president having a mental illness.
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In a statement published on his campaign website last week, Smith alleged that there are “significant indications that President Obama has purposefully placed children into harm's way for his own benefit. People who intentionally hurt children for attention can be accused of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The facts surrounding the surge of unaccompanied, non-citizen children across the border support this charge.”
When Smith was asked how he could diagnose Obama, he admitted he is not a psychologist and was just speculating.
Munchausen Syndrome by proxy is a mental illness that is also a form of child abuse, according to the National Institutes of Health. Parents or caretakers display signs of the illness when they make up symptoms or cause symptoms for their children to appear as if they were sick.
Smith alleges that the announcement of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a memorandum drafted by the Obama administration in June 2012, led to a spike in the number of immigrant children referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. And the symptoms of Obama’s illness became clear to Smith in January of 2014 when the Federal Business Office posted a listing seeking “escort services for unaccompanied alien children.”
“Any adult who clearly sees danger for a child would step in to prevent it,” Smith says on his website. “President Obama, when requesting transport services for 65,000 unaccompanied children earlier this year, saw the coming harm and did nothing to stop it.”
Smith is running against incumbent Democrat Filemon Vela, who destroyed his opponent in 2012 with 62 percent of the vote. The army vet entered politics this year initially planning to run as an independent but switched to the GOP to gain more traction.
Smith legitimized his call for legal recourse by suggesting there was intentionality in this blatant lack of attention to an impending crisis. It was to demonstrate to Republicans just how bad the immigration issue is, imploring them to agree with proposed Democratic reforms after seeing children suffer.
“This situation was promoted, supported by the Obama administration and it was being taken advantage of,” Smith said. “They saw an opportunity to use it as a political weapon against the Republican Party and sure enough, they’re doing it. This is an opportunity for the Democrats to force the Republican Party into a national immigration reform debate.”
While this causal relationship is not quite a popular opinion among Republicans, the administration is drawing ire nonetheless for the ensuing crisis. But Smith is by no means afraid to make unpopular declarations. In an interview with the Caller Times, he said that Islam is “oppressive to women and children,” and that he really “dislike[s] who these people are.”
Smith says that his opinions about people of the Muslim faith were formulated during his time serving in Iraq. He wrote a book entitled Message to Garcia, (the name is based on a fictional Cuban general created by 19th century American author Elbert Hubbard), in which he opines on the Islamic faith in a chapter called: “This is your brain on Arab.”
“In the Middle East, Islam is militant,” Smith writes. “It is a religion of manipulation. It has no standards. There is no equivalent to the Ten Commandments in the Koran. Where the Bible would tell you ‘though shall not covet’, the Koran will give you all the circumstances under which you would be allowed to covet.”
With these misguided principles, it is easy for Muslims to make it to heaven, according to Smith.
“A Christian believes that acknowledgement of one’s sins and asking forgiveness for them, and accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is the path that leads to Paradise,” the chapter reads. “Not so with Islam. There are many ways to enter Allah’s Kingdom. Killing an infidel is the easiest. Their death at your hand guarantees you access. Related to this is to die in combat within Allah’s will. You can strap a vest of explosives around you, walk into a crowded day-care and as long as you attempt to kill the American soldier standing outside by the window, then you and all those kids are on their way to Paradise. Allah, what a guy.”
Without a heavy stock of past legislative action or campaign doctrine at his disposal, this is Smith’s closest thing to a manifesto.
