"Obama to speak Wednesday on Islamic State strategy" by Sam Schaffer

"I'm preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from ISIS," President Obama said Sunday.

On Wednesday, President Obama is scheduled to make a speech detailing his strategy on dealing with and eventually destroying the Islamic terrorist group ISIS. In his NBC interview Sunday, he claimed that he was going to speak Wednesday about his 'game plan' for defeating the Islamic militants. 

The speech, taking place on the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, will be a reminder of our violent conflict with the radical Islamic world- which, despite the efforts of two administrations and thousands of American soldiers, has no foreseeable end in sight.

After returning from the NATO summit in Wales, Obama said that he was confident in his ability to to create an international coalition focused on taking out the Islamic State, which has entrenched itself in large areas of Syria and Iraq since its inception in 1999.

Although he said that he was now moving to the 'offensive phase' of his ISIS strategy, Obama warned that it would not involve US boots on Iraqi soil. He likened the upcoming offensive to "the counterterrorism campaigns that we've been engaging in consistently over the last five, six, seven years," rather than the deployment of large armies to Middle Eastern areas containing extremist groups. 

I think that Obama's decision to avoid a large-scale land offensive on the part of the US is a good one.  The Iraq War, a large-scale invasion and occupation of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq, was partially a vain effort- although the invasion forces quickly toppled the theocratic regime, chaos and insurgency soon moved in to take its place. Thirteen years later, there is still significant violence and radical Islamic groups still control a large portion of the country. A second land campaign would prove to be ineffective, and ultimately wasteful in American money and lives. Obama's alternative of acting in a coalition is the most effective plan for eliminating ISIS, and in the best interests of our nation.

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