The founder of the group and former House Intelligence Committee chairman, Mike Rogers, wrote an email to supporters this weekend in which he praised the group's efforts to push candidates on US national security and foreign policy issues. According to Rogers, the current tendency among Republican presidential candidates to call for escalation of military action in Syria is one of the group's major achievements.
The email contained "highlights" from several forums indicating a significant shift in candidates' attitude toward Middle East policy and displaying the group's impact.
"We also need to decide, in terms of these radical jihadists, what do we want to do? Do we want to contain them or do we want to destroy them?" Ben Carson said at an APPS forum in Iowa, "I vote for the latter, because you know they want to destroy us and there is no such thing as containing people like that."
The message also cited Mike Huckabee's claim at an APPS forum in Greenville that the US should have been "running hundreds, if not thousands, of A-10 Warthogs busting every time a truck with supplies was on its way to ISIS soldiers."
Rogers quoted other policy makers including Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio saying that America can and should be doing much more against terrorists.
APPS' goal is to make sure the future President of the United States "supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy". In order to achieve this goal, the group members spend money on public events in primary states and pushe presidential contestants toward more decisive positions.
