Sen. Richard Burr warned the Obama administration’s strategy of what he calls containment of the Islamic State might give the terror group an opening to do harm in the future.
Obama says that the Islamic State is “contained” in Iraq and Syria and facing slow defeat. But in the Republican’s weekly radio address Saturday the North Carolina senator and member of the Select Committee on Intelligence said that “the more important metric” is the Islamic State’s “global footprint,” which includes a growing influence in other embattled countries like Afghanistan and Libya.
Burr urged a more “proactive” approach for defeating the Islamic State, which recently claimed credit for an deadly attack at a Brussels airport and metro station. Burr said that before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “our enemies were confined to safe havens abroad.”
“That’s no longer the case,” the senator said.
“ISIL has declared provinces in ten countries. It has aspiring affiliates in seven others; and has a presence in over 30 countries,” Burr said, using an alternative acronym for the group. “From their safe haven, the Islamic State continues its ongoing efforts to plan and carry out attacks.”
The senator’s remarks follow President Obama’s warning Friday that the anti-Islamic State coalition’s escalating efforts to take down the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria may result in a rise in retaliatory attacks. Speaking to world leaders at this week’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Obama they should anticipate Islamic State “lashing out” elsewhere, as in the Brussels attack and a bombing in Turkey.
“I cannot remember a time where the United States and our allies faced a greater array of threats across the world,” said Burr, who recently returned from a trip to Europe where he spoke with foreign intelligence officials. “When the president says that we must seek to ‘contain’ ISIL — I don’t know where he wants to contain them. ISIL operatives are everywhere.”
“Simply seeking to contain ISIL should no longer be seen as an acceptable course of action,” Burr said, urging more aggressive action to destroy the group.
Burr said cooperating with allies is essential to targeting the terrorist organization’s operations network. Domestically, “we must enable our law enforcement and give them the tools and authorities they need to keep our citizens safe at home,” Burr said. He did not elaborate on what powers he meant.
Burr also cautioned that the threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates cannot be ignored. They are “committed to attacking us — and they have the capabilities to do so,” he said.
“The world in which we live is becoming increasingly dangerous and the number of extremists who wish to do us harm is growing,” Burr said. “More troubling, their capabilities to do harm may soon outpace the administration’s strategy of ‘containment.’ The president accurately stated last week that ‘ISIL poses a threat to the entire civilized world.’ Now it is time for our strategy to match that threat.”
