Like it or not, the only way to eliminate the violent Islamic State (ISIS) movement is with an all-out U.S. military effort — "a mission that is going to be pretty hard to take, I think, for the American people," a former CIA covert operations officer told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
Joshua Katz told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that "the only path to success" against the Islamic State is to attack it with the "entire weight" of America's combined military, intelligence, diplomatic and economic power.
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"Airstrikes alone aren't going to cut it," said Katz, a partner with the Enright Group, a global strategic advisory firm, and a former adviser to the House Homeland Security Committee.
Katz said that ISIS, which has now decapitated two American journalists on video, must be understood as a global threat and confronted as one, with "all the weight and full commitment" the U.S. can bring to bear.
"If we're going to use half-measures here, we're not going to be successful," he said.
President Barack Obama, he said, has already been "derelict in his duty" to protect Americans from the likes of ISIS.
"We're dealing with an administration that does not even have a premise here,"said Katz, who described the White House as reacting to ISIS "without a goal, without a strategy, without understanding the enemy."
Katz said that even the president's rhetoric toward ISIS, including his promise to make the murderous group a
"manageable problem," has sounded oddly accommodating — as if he were "reaching out with an olive branch rather than reaching out with a stick," he said.
People who work in national and global security are picking up on the appeasing tone, said Katz, and finding it unbearable.
Katz said Obama's tepid phrasings are "really destroying morale, destroying relationships, and really helping the enemy."
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