Americans will have to be patient as the “long term campaign” to mitigate the Islamic State makes slow progress, said a senior Obama administration official today on CNN’s “The State of the Union.”
“The threat of the challenge is enormous and it’s something we’ve never seen before,” said Brett McGurk, the State Department’s special envoy on defeating the Islamic State.
U.S.-led allies have reclaimed 25 percent of the populated areas the Islamic State had taken control of, but eradicating the group is “going to take time.”
McGurk said that a coalition of countries is focusing on cutting off foreign funding and the flow of people heading toward Iraq and Syria. The task isn’t easy though, as he noted 180 Americans have attempted to join the terrorist group’s ranks.
The comments come as Congress must decide whether to reauthorize the Patriot Act, the post-Sept. 11, 2001 legislation that granted the federal government broad, warrantless surveillance authority for national security purposes. The law, which expires in June, has come under increasing pressure from civil liberties groups following revelations regarding the federal government’s bulk collection of phone records.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, said it was vital to renew the law.
Johnson pointed to last week’s shooting at a Garland, Texas, event — a cartoon contest for drawing pictures of the prophet Muhammed — as an example of the task before the national security community. He noted the FBI had contacted one of the assailants 330 times and that he was on an FBI watch list.
Johnson said removing surveillance capabilities would make defending the nation against terrorists even harder.
Echoing FBI Director James Comey’s comments earlier this week, Johnson said: “We’ve got a very large haystack. We’re looking for a needle in it.”
