The United States is "going to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL the same way we have gone after al Qaeda," President Obama said Friday of the terrorist organization that recently took credit for beheading American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, adding that their militants have become too dangerous to simply be contained.
The militant group, also known as ISIS, "poses a long-term threat to the safety and security of NATO members," Obama said at a press conference in Newport, Wales. "We have a critical role to play in rolling back this savage organization."
Speaking at the conclusion of a NATO summit that was called to deal with Russian aggression in Ukraine, Obama said that NATO countries had agreed on the need for immediate action against the militants, including getting help from the Arab states, mainly those with a Sunni majority, NBC News reported.
"You can't contain an organization that is running roughshod through that much territory, causing that much havoc, displacing that many people, killing that many innocents, enslaving that many women," he said. "The goal has to be to dismantle them," which would include bolstering Iraqi security forces and taking out ISIS leaders, he said.
Additionally, the president advocated systematically "taking the fight to" ISIS in much the same way the U.S. combated al Qaeda.
"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 control, you take out their leadership, and over time, they are not able to conduct the same kinds of terrorist attacks that they once could," Obama said, adding that U.S. combat troops would not be deployed to the region.
"I don't think that's necessary for us to accomplish our goal," he said. Instead, the American military will work to strengthen Iraqi and Syrian forces already on the ground, according to ABC News.
Obama also called for a "strategic communications effort so that we are discouraging people from thinking that [ISIS] represents a state, much less a caliphate."
"That's not what Islam is about," he added.
In a London Times Op-Ed, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron panned an "isolationist approach" and vowed that America and Britain "will not be cowed" by ISIS.
"Whether it is regional aggression going unchecked or the prospect that foreign fighters could return from Iraq and Syria to pose a threat in our countries, the problems we face today threaten the security of British and American people," they wrote.
Last Thursday, Obama's stark admission that the White House had "no strategy" to combat the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Syria gained lots of criticism.
