Obama outlines strategy to 'ultimately destroy' Islamic State
The United States and its allies aim to degrade and ultimately destroy the militant group Islamic State, President Obama said Friday as he began to outline a U.S. strategy focused on gathering partners from Sunni Arab states and aiding fighters on the region's front lines.
Our goal is to act with urgency but also make sure that we're doing it right, that we have the right targets, that there's support on the ground that we have a strong political coalition, Obama said at a news conference as a NATO summit wrapped up in Wales.
In one respect, his remarks were a damage-control effort aimed at undoing the political problems he caused last week by saying that his administration did not yet have a strategy to combat the militant group, at least in the territory it controls in Syria. They also served as a rebuttal to a growing chorus of critics who've described Obama's foreign policy as deliberative to the point of dithering.
Obama provided a window on what he described as his developing strategy, one that has expanded far beyond the initial goals of protecting U.S. personnel and reaching stranded refugees.
One major piece of the strategy for weakening the threat from Islamic State, Obama and aides said, will be the support and participation of the neighbors of Syria and Iraq.
It is absolutely critical that we have Arab states, and specifically Sunni-majority states, that are rejecting the kind of extremist nihilism that we're seeing out of ISIL, that say, That is not what Islam is about,' and are prepared to join us actively in the fight, Obama said, using one of the acronyms for Islamic State.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are to fly to the Middle East in coming days to line up regional partners, a push for a Middle Eastern coalition that recalled the Sunni Awakening movement a decade ago that brought some stabilization to Iraq during the war there.
Jordan and Saudi Arabia remain top targets for financial assistance and intelligence help, as well as the United Arab Emirates, which has already expressed support for Obama's aims.
Obama said the approach he outlined allowed him to be deliberate in taking on Islamic State.
You initially push them back. You systematically degrade their capabilities. You narrow their scope of action. You slowly shrink the space, the territory that they may control. You take out their leadership, he said. And over time, they are not able to conduct the same kinds of terrorist attacks as they once could.
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Obama outlines strategy to 'ultimately destroy' Islamic State