Obama Underestimated The Threat Essay

President Obama underestimated the threat. If he would have taken action when warned, he would have been capable of eliminating the entire Islamic State. On August 2013 Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was in Washington D.C requesting U.S. air surveillance and drone strikes . If Obama would have granted this request, he could have stopped ISIS as they were manifesting in the western Iraqi desert, away from civilians, a perfect strike zone (Liptak). “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Declared Obama in an interview with New Yorker in January 2014 (qtd. in Thiessen). He blatantly dismissed the unfolding threat of ISIS as a junior

Considering what Al Qaeda did to America on 9/11, Obama's unwillingness to act is a disgrace to this country. Obama then proceeded to tell reporters intelligence estimates had falsely predicted advances of ISIS throughout Iraq and Syria. How ever, it is proven that U.S officials had thoroughly warned him about the rising terror group. October of 2014 a senior administration official claimed that ISIS was a legitimate threat and was a liability not only to the region and the U.S Eight months later the military’s top intelligence official warned that the terror group “will attempt to take territory.” These public assessments of ISIS were coming from Obama’s administration dating back as far as 2013, so why would Obama say his intelligence underestimated ISIS? Obama confessed that the U.S "underestimated what had been taking place in Syria" that allowed the country to become "ground zero for jihadists around the world.” Unfortunately, Obama, being the president he is, falsely blamed his director of national intelligence James Clapper, for underestimating the threat. Obama was exceedingly ill advised and led this great nation to shame by underestimating such a powerful threat, when he had the power to prevent mass