WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaida-inspired militants who have violently seized territory in Iraq could grow in power and destabilize other countries in the region, President Barack Obama warned Sunday.
The Iraqi public will ultimately reject the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the extremist Sunni group threatening Iraq’s government, but the group still represents a medium and long-term threat to the United States, Obama said.
“We’re going to have to be vigilant generally. Right now the problem with ISIS is the fact that they’re destabilizing the country,” Obama said, using a common acronym for the group. “That could spill over into some of our allies like Jordan.”
The Sunni insurgency in Iraq and neighboring Syria is just one of an array of threats the U.S. must guard against, Obama said in an interview recorded Friday and airing Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He pointed to the group Boko Haram in north Africa and al-Qaida groups in Yemen that he said also demand the attention of the U.S. and its partners.
“What we can’t do is think that we’re just going to play whack-a-mole and send US troops occupying various countries wherever these organizations pop up,” Obama said. “We’re going to have to have a more focused, more targeted strategy and we’re going to have to partner and train local law enforcement and military to do their jobs as well.”
Obama’s comments came as U.S. lawmakers and officials within his own administration are grappling with the best way to address the growing insurgency in Iraq just years after American troops pulled out. As bloody sectarian violence breaks out once again in Iraq, a president who opposed the Iraq war and vowed to end it is finding the U.S. being lured back into the conflict by the deteriorating security situation.
Obama has announced plans to send 300 special operations forces into Iraq to train its military, but insists the U.S. military can’t effectively quell the conflict unless Iraq’s own Shiite-led government pursues a more inclusive approach that doesn’t shun the Sunni minority.
The issue has divided Congress, with some lawmakers criticizing Obama for doing too little and others warning the return of armed troops to Iraq could be the first step toward pulling the U.S. back into the conflict.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Oh gee… I would hate to see Iraq destabilized
I think it far better to have Obama in the Oval office than the GOP alternative. After all they were the ones who said we’d be greeted with flowers.
What exactly is your point? If you’re disagreeing with our President, do tell what he’s got wrong.
Those ISIS jihadists are apparently now savvy about twitter, Facebook and propaganda videos on YouTube. But you know what? They sound exactly like the ‘sovereign citizens’ movement in the US. Same rhetoric, same demand for ‘freedom’ and hatred of all regulation offered by normal governments. One guy was exuberant that unlike his former home in the UK, he gets to drive without a license in Iraq now, he can watch telly without a license unlike in the UK, and best of all he says, he can walk the streets with his Kalishnikov without interference. Sound familiar?
In other words. The only thing all these ‘rebels’ has got going for them is hatred of regulation… it doesn’t seem like much to hang a new state on.
And yes, I BLAME GEORGE W BUSH…and Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and William Luti and Stephen Hadley and Richard Perle and Eliot Abrams and Scooter Libby and John Hannah and David Wurmser and Andrew Natsios (sounds kinda like Nazi breakfast food, don’t you think?) and Dan Bartlett and Mitch Daniels and George Tenet and Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice.
They are all war criminals, and they all should be tried at the Hague, and put into prison garb, locked away and forgotten, but for the history books.
http://thinkprogress.org/report/the-architects-where-are-they-now/
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/condi.jpg