Overnight the U.S. government verified as authentic a video that shows American journalist Steven Sotloff being beheaded by Islamic State militants. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday morning during a press conference in Estonia that the U.S. government is working to “degrade and destroy” the group, but didn’t give many specifics.
“It’s going to take some time and it’s going to take some effort,” said Obama. “As we’ve seen with al Qaeda, there are always going to be remnants that can cause havoc of any of these networks, in part because of the nature of terrorist activities. You get a few individuals, and they may be able to carry out a terrorist act.”
Obama also said that Americans are “repulsed by their barbarism” after learning of the video and that Sotloff’s murder won’t intimidate the U.S. government.
“Their horrific acts only unite us as a country and stiffen our resolve to take the fight against these terrorists,” said Obama. “ And those who make the mistake of harming Americans will learn that we will not forget, and that our reach is long and that justice will be served.”
Make a Plan
On Tuesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott used his official Twitter account to send a clear message to Obama: make a plan. Sotloff was from Florida and much of his family lives there.
“The people who did this are not merely wrong, they are not adversaries—they are evil,” wrote Scott. “And evil must be confronted and destroyed.”
He also said that the time is now to get a strategy.
“Barack Obama said that his administration does not at present have a strategy for dealing with ISIS,” he wrote. “The time for a strategy is now, and part of that strategy needs to include destroying them.”
Vice President Joe Biden had much stronger words for the terrorists during an appearance in Maine on Wednesday, promising that the U.S. would follow the militants to “the gates of hell.”
Obama has tried to backtrack from damage he did last week when he said that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for how to deal with the Islamic State group in Syria. On Wednesday, he said that the U.S. has used a two-fold approach ever since ISIS entered Mosul, Iraq.
“Number one, to make sure that Americans were protected in Iraq, in our embassies, in our consulates,” he said. “Number two, that we worked with Iraqis to create a functioning government that was inclusive and that could serve as the basis for Iraq to begin to go on the offensive.”
He also said that it is important for airstrikes to have a strong purpose and objective and aim to be effective.
In the Sotloff video, a masked militant with a knife warns Obama that as long as U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State group continue, “our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”
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The president said he plans to consult with NATO allies at a European summit later this week on a strategy to combat the Islamic State and other militant networks.
Dual Citizenship
Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth reported the Sotloff, who was Jewish, had dual American-Israeli citizenship, a fact which he apparently hid from his captors. The Israeli government did not make any immediate comment on Sotloff’s death, but friends and colleagues in Israel remembered him as someone who was ahead of the curve in his reporting on the Islamic world.
“He covered many countries in the Mideast since 2009, including stories on the Arab Spring, and then again in 2012 he was covering stories for us from Libya, Egypt, Turkey and Syria. Where he was subsequently abducted by al-Qaeda and then transferred,” said Felice Friedson, president of The Media Line in an interview with Yediot Ahronoth.
Friedson said that Sotloff did a great deal of reporting about terrorists, particularly about jihadists taking over in Syria, Libya, and the Sinai.
“Obviously the most important thing is that we harshly condemn the barbaric killing of our colleague and friend and it is important that the world wake up--and this was Steve’s wish--that they wake and read what he was writing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
