Obama walks US back into limited war in Middle East to destroy ISIS

WASHINGTON: President Obama is walking the United States back into the Middle East minefield to “degrade and destroy” Sunni terrorists operating under the banner of the Islamic State, whose extremists he said posed a threat outside the region, including to the United States.

In a prime time TV address on the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11, Obama assured Americans that the US will not get dragged into another war in Iraq, made it clear that terrorists who threaten America will have to be hunted down, wherever they are, including in Syria; left unchecked, they would pose an imminent danger to the US, he said, opening a potentially new front in Washington’s ceaseless war on terror since 2002 that has seen military action against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

“This is a core principle of my presidency — If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” Obama said, reminding Americans that the rabid terrorists had executed two American journalists, and while Washington has not yet detected specific plotting against the US homeland, ISIS leaders have threatened America and its allies.

President Obama, whose middle name Hussein is derived from his Kenyan father, took pains to tell the Islamic world that the US was not against Islam and did not consider the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Syria) to represent Islam.”ISIS is not ‘Islamic’. No religion condones the killing of innocents. And the vast majority of ISIS’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIS is certainly not a state. It was formerly al-Qaida’s affiliate in Iraq. It is recognized by no government, nor by the people it subjugates. ISIS is a terrorist organization, pure and simple,” the US President said, laying the ground for expanded air strikes in the region while pledging there will be no ground troops, although he was deploying some 475 more military advisers to hundreds already in Iraq.