Presidents - Barack Obama - ISIS

(Politifact) -- President Barack Obama granted an exclusive sit down to Meet the Press for new host Chuck Todd's inaugural show.

As expected, Todd and Obama had a long discussion about the administration’s strategy for dealing with Islamic State, the terrorist group responsible for the beheading of two American journalists, with Obama stating "we’re going to defeat them."

Todd then remarked that Obama’s response was a "long way from when you described them as a JV team."
Obama replied,

Keep in mind I wasn’t specifically referring to (Islamic State)

(New Yorker) -- At the core of Obama’s thinking is that American military involvement cannot be the primary instrument to achieve the new equilibrium that the region so desperately needs. And yet thoughts of a pacific equilibrium are far from anyone’s mind in the real, existing Middle East.

In the 2012 campaign, Obama spoke not only of killing Osama bin Laden; he also said that Al Qaeda had been “decimated.” I pointed out that the flag of Al Qaeda is now flying in Falluja, in Iraq, and among various rebel factions in Syria; Al Qaeda has asserted a presence in parts of Africa, too.

The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant

“Let’s just keep in mind, Falluja is a profoundly conservative Sunni city in a country that, independent of anything we do, is deeply divided along sectarian lines. And how we think about terrorism has to be defined and specific enough that it doesn’t lead us to think that any horrible actions that take place around the world that are motivated in part by an extremist Islamic ideology are a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”