In an interview that aired Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," President Obama denied that the Islamic State group was gaining strength, saying that the U.S. has halted and contained the terror group's expansion. However, the president admitted that attempts to "decapitate" ISIS' leadership have been unsuccessful and will require a "multi-year effort."
ABC's George Stephanopoulos told Obama that "even your friendly critics...say what you have on the ground is not going to be enough. Every couple months you will be faced with the same choice, back down or double down," reported The Daily Caller.
Obama explained that his strategy has always been a "multi-year project" because "the government structures in the Sunni areas of Iraq are weak and there are none in Syria, and we don't have ground forces there in sufficient numbers to simply march into al Raqqah and Syria and clean the whole place out. And as a consequence, we've always understood that our goal has to be militarily constraining ISIL's capabilities, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing."
Stephanopoulos then asked, "Bus ISIS is gaining strength, aren't they?"
"I don't think they're gaining strength," Obama responded. "What is true, from the start our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria. They'll come in. They'll leave. But you don't see this systemic march by ISIL across the terrain."
"What we have not yet been able to do," Obama acknowledged, "is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We've made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters, and part of our goal has been to recruit more effective Sunni partners in Iraq to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense."
Obama said there will continue to be problems in the region "until we get the Syria political situation resolved."
"Until [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad is no longer a lightning rod for Sunnis in Syria and that entire region is no longer a proxy war for Shia-Sunni conflict, we're going to continue to have problems," Obama said, failing to note that the U.S. continues to be one of the main instigators in that proxy war by arming and training rebels trying to overthrow Assad.
The president's comments come two weeks after he announced that a small group of less than 50 U.S. special ops soldiers will be sent into Syria for an undetermined period of time to bolster rebel forces as they fight ISIS, reported CNN. That announcement was made despite Obama promising at least eight times since 2013 to not put boots on the ground in Syria.
Meanwhile on Friday, the U.S. Army said it was reasonably certain that a drone airstrike the previous night killed everyone in the target area, including Mohammed Emwazi, aka "Jihadi John," reported ABC News.
