Obama: We have no strategy on IS
US president Barrack Obama admitted yesterday that he does not have a plan to deal with the blood-stained rise of Islamic State jihadists.
Asked if he would seek Congressional approval for attacks on Sunni Muslim IS forces in Syria as well as in Iraq, he damped down calls for swift action, saying: “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse.” He added: “We don’t have a strategy yet. Some of the news reports suggest that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are.”
The president, who was due to consider his military options with his National Security Council, stressed that he wanted to ensure IS was not “overrunning Iraq”. But he said: “Syria is not simply a military issue, also a political issue.
“It’s also an issue that involves all the Sunni states in the region and Sunni leadership recognising that this cancer that has developed is one that they have to be just as invested in defeating as we are.”
Although the US has carried out air strikes on IS in Iraq, the White House is reluctant to embark on a
it’s wider military campaign. Mr Obama’s resistance was at odds with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey, who says IS can only be beaten if the US acts in both countries.
Republican Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said: “It just confirmed what we’ve been talking about really for almost two years – there has been no real strategy.”