I DUNNO, I’LL BET THE BELGIANS WISH THEY’D DONE IT IN MOLENBEEK: Obama goes after Cruz for urging patrols of Muslim neighborhoods.

President Obama on Wednesday delivered a sharply personal rebuke of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz for his call to institute surveillance on Muslim communities in response to the Brussels terrorist attacks.

During a press conference in Argentina, Obama called such a proposal “wrong and un-American” and said it would undermine the U.S. campaign against Islamic extremists.

Obama invoked Cruz’s Cuban heritage, arguing the Texas senator was ignoring the personal journey of his father, who fled the island nation for the United States to escape political oppression.

“I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance, which, by the way, the father of Sen. Cruz escaped for America,” the president said. “The land of the free. The notion that we would start down that slippery slope makes absolutely no sense.”

You’d hardly know from this statement that Obama’s own Justice Department wants to be able to spy on everyone’s iPhones. But it’s nice to hear the criticism of Cuban repression: Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Related: Cruz doubles down on call to monitor Muslims in US.

In the face of continued criticismRepublican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Wednesday doubled down on his call for authorities to monitor Muslims living in the United States.

Cruz touched off a political firestorm Tuesday with his call to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods” in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, for which the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has claimed responsibility.

Cruz took to “CBS This Morning” Wednesday to point to isolated neighborhoods in Belgium that “become incubators for radical, Islamic terrorism,” saying “of course” the same exists in the United States.

“Name one community, one city where we have a large group of radicalized Muslims,” host Norah O’Donnell responded.

“You have communities, for example, in Minnesota, you have communities in Michigan with heavy concentration” of Muslims, Cruz said, mentioning “radical imams preaching jihadism, preaching Islamism.”

Obama’s IRS is already monitoring churches for political content. But that’s different, because it’s targeting Republicans.

Meanwhile, Cruz needs to explain to Obama that he’s just trying to make America more like France. What Democrat could be against that?