The Obama administration's controversial approach to fighting the Islamic State terrorists by providing them with jobs instead of killing them has caused an uproar.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf suggested that defeating ISIS in the Middle East requires more of a jobs program for terrorists than a sophisticated approach to killing them, Mediaite reported. Since the comments went viral, Harf has had to deal with severe backlash.
"We're killing a lot of them and we're going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They're in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war," she told Chris Matthews Monday night on MSNBC' "Hardball."
Instead, the administration should "go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups," including "lack of opportunity for jobs," according to Harf.
Particularly, a combination of military force and an exploration of the reasons why so many young people become ISIS recruits to fight against the West could help stop the ongoing terror threat, she said.
"We're not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or 50 lifetimes," Matthews interrupted. "There's always going to be poor people. There's always going to be poor Muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet's blowing and they'll join. We can't stop that, can we? We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance."
"We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people," the former spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency said, however conceding that there is "no easy solution."
Meanwhile, the controversial comments come as the White House attracted new criticism for papering over religious aspects of a mass-beheading of Coptic Christians by the terrorist organization on Sunday, UK MailOnline reported.
After a video, titled "A Message Signed With Blood to the Nation of the Cross," surfaced showing 21 Christians being beheaded on a beach, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest issued a 192-word reaction condemning the brutal killings as "despicable" and "cowardly" but made no mention of the religion of the killers or their victims.
"We are not treating these people as part of a religion," a senior administration official said Monday during a conference call with reporters. "We're treating them as terrorists. We call them our enemies and we'll be treating them as such."
However, Pope Francis stated that the victims "were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians."
"The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians!" he said Monday at the Vatican, speaking in his native Spanish.
