Barack Obama’s Game Plan
Barack Obama Reveals His Offensive Game Plan Against the ISIS
By Zachary Hirsch (Contributor)
American president Barack Obama will announce today (Wednesday, September 10th) a new US “game plan” for an offensive against the militant jihadist group “ISIS”, operating inside Iraq and Syria.
The self-proclaimed goal of ISIS is to claim religious authority over all Muslims world-wide, and aspires to control the Middle East, starting with Iraq and Syria, and eventually Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Turkey. ISIS is recognized as an international terrorist group by the United Nations and was accused of extreme human rights abuses by Amnesty International of ethnic cleansing of minority groups in northern Iraq.
President Obama did not mince words when asked about ISIS.“I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from [ISIS]. Keep in mind that this is something that we know how to do. We’ve been dealing with terrorist threats for quite some time. This administration has systematically dismantled Al Qaeda in the FATA.” the president stated during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press programme. “I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we’re going to deal with it and to have confidence that we’ll be able to deal with it.”
Obama stressed that intelligence agencies have not seen any immediate terrorist threats from ISIS to the American homeland yet. Instead, he expressed concern about the future possibilities if they were to gather arms and resources in the long-term.
“What I’m going to be asking the American people to understand is, number one, this is a serious threat. Number two, we have the capacity to deal with it. Here’s how we’re going to deal with it. I am going to be asking Congress to make sure that they understand and support what our plan is. And it’s going to require some resources, I suspect, above what we are currently doing in the region–” Obama is seeking approval from Congress to support his plan against ISIS. “I do think it’s important for Congress to understand what the plan is… and this speech will allow Congress, I think, to understand very clearly and very specifically what it is that we are doing but also what we’re not doing.”
Obama wanted to assure Congress and the American people that there would be no U.S. troops on the ground, and that this is not going to be a repeat of the Iraq war. Instead, Obama stated that America would be part of an international coalition, supporting Iraqi and Kurdish troops by carrying out air strikes in support of their efforts. “We are going to be helping to put together a plan for them, so that they can start retaking territory that [ISIS] had taken over.
“The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake. And I want to be very clear and very explicit about that,” the president wanted to stress.