Reacting to the suggestion by a State Department official that providing jobs to recruits was a way to counter radical Islamic terror groups, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden said a "change in career path" is not the way to defeat ISIS.
"I don't think a change in career path is what's going to stop them," SEAL Team member Rob O'Neill told Fox News on Tuesday night.
Story continues below video.
During an appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" earlier in the week, Marie Harf, a deputy State Department spokeswoman, suggested that just "killing" members of ISIS was an insufficient strategy.
"But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium- to longer-term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's a lack of opportunity for jobs," Harf told host Matthews on Monday.
Story continues below video.
O'Neill, who was a member of SEAL Team 6, said Harf's comments could be understood because of the diplomatic mission of the State Department, but he argued it is not the time for diplomacy.
"The State Department is into diplomacy and that's the kind of stuff they are going to say, but right now we don't need diplomacy. Right now the people of ISIS, if you can call them people, they get paid to cut off heads — to crucify children — to sell slaves and to cut off heads," said O'Neill in the interview with Fox News host Greta van Susteren.
Asked what military strategy he would advise the administration adopt, he said that solely relying on air strikes is not a solution because it is a "force multiplier" and "what we need are forces on the ground to multiply."
While discussing the White House conference on violent extremism, Harf also
told CNN that providing jobs was part of a long-term strategy to show disaffected young men "there is a different choice for them than" joining a radical Islamic terror group.
"I'm not the first person to say something like this. Military commanders that we've had throughout many years here fighting this war on terrorism have said the exact same thing.
"In the short term when there's a threat like ISIL, we'll take direct military action against these terrorists. We have done that. We are doing that in Iraq and Syria. But longer term, we have to look at how we combat the conditions that can lead people to turn to extremism," she told Wolf Blitzer, the host of "The Situation Room."
Harf also tried to explain her remarks
via Twitter, noting that President George W. Bush had said that eradicating poverty was part of a strategy to combat terrorism.
"And let's not forget George W Bush's comments on CVE [combating violent extremism]: 'We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror,'" Harf tweeted.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.