NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd said President Obama “sounded a lot like his predecessor George W. Bush” when talking about his plans for military action in the Middle East on Sunday.
“Their rhetoric is strikingly similar,” he said before launching into a Jon Stewart-esque series of clips juxtaposing Obama’s pronunciations on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Wednesday — “ISIL is not Islamic,” “It will take time to eradicate ISIL” — with virtually identical Bush quotes.
“The fact is, they are pursuing similar policies now,” Todd said.
Those include airstrikes, “support” for ground forces, and the building of a coalition of allies to get involved in the Middle East.
A new NBC poll shows that 68 percent of Americans don’t believe Obama’s plan for limited action in Syria will work.
“ISIL” is the acronym used by the president and some others in the national security community to refer to the group now calling itself the Islamic State. The letters stand for the group’s original name, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The group is also commonly known by the acronym ISIS.
