Obama Vows to ‘Destroy’ ISIS

Biden Delivers Puzzling Speech About Going to Hell to Fight ISIS

Citing the beheading of another captured reporter, US officials are dramatically stepping up their rhetoric related to the ongoing war with ISIS, with President Obama vowing to totally destroy the group.

Our objective is clear and that is to degrade and destroy,” Obama said of ISIS, insisting the group had already failed because he was “not intimidated” by the beheading.

We’re less than a week off of admissions that the US doesn’t have a real strategy to achieve victory against ISIS, and the group continues to be driving the administration toward heedless escalation, which is greatly increasing ISIS recruitment abilities and international profile, and is just dragging the US into another open-ended, unpopular war.

Other administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry, echoed Obama’s promises, and were similarly light on details for how the war was going to proceed.

Vice President Joe Biden’s comments were by far the most perplexing, however, as he appeared to get his cliches a bit mixed up.

“We don’t forget. We take care of those who are grieving, and when that’s finished, they should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside,” Biden insisted.

The timing was even more puzzling, as Biden was in the middle of delivering a speech about the middle class role in the US economy when he went off on his tangent about ISIS proximity to hell and how the US military would figure into that mix.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.