Obama Admin. Spokeswoman Says This Is the Key to Defeating Islamic State — and It’s Not ‘Killing Them’

The U.S. can’t defeat the Islamic State by “killing them,” State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Monday night.

“We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war,” Harf said.

Instead, she said the U.S. needs to focus on the “medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups,” such as “lack of opportunity for jobs.”

Matthews pushed back slightly, telling his guest that the United States isn’t going to be able to fix those kinds of societal problems in “fifty lifetimes.”

“There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?” he said.

Harf replied, “We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.”

(H/T: Right Scoop)

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