Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said that the U.S. is “at war” with ISIS, signaling a terminology shift in the the administration’s description of its mission to defeat the Islamic State.
Though he said that the country is at war, Kerry said that the exact words used to discuss the efforts don’t matter.
“In terms of al Qaeda, which we have used the word ‘war’ with, yeah…we are at war with al Qaeda and it’s affiliates. And in the same context if you want to use it, yes, we are at war with ISIL in that sense,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But I think it’s waste of time to focus on that. Frankly, lets consider what we have to do to degrade and defeat ISIL.”
Though Kerry downplayed the war terminology, just Thursday Kerry would not say whether the U.S. was at war. He told CNN that the administration’s approach includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.”
“If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts,” he said.