Obama on ISIS: ‘Our Goal Has To Be Militarily Constraining ISIL’s Capabilities’

STEPHANOPOULOS: "But the coalition hasn’t all stepped up. And some of your critics say, even your friendly critics say, like Fareed Zakaria, that what you have on the ground now is not going to be enough. Every couple of months you’re going to be faced with the same choice of back down or double down."
OBAMA: "I think what is true is that this has always been a multi-year project precisely because the governance structures in the Sunni areas of Iraq are weak, and there are none in Syria. And we don’t have ground forces there in in sufficient numbers so simply march into Al-Raqqah in Syria and clean the whole place out. And as a consequence, we’ve always understood that our goal has to be militarily constraining ISIL’s capabilities, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing at the same time as we’re putting a political track together in Syria and fortifying the best impulses in Baghdad so that we can, not just win militarily, but also win by improving governance -- [crosstalk] -- and that’s the strategy you’ve been following. But ISIS is gaining strength, aren’t they?"
OBAMA: "Well, no, I don’t think they’re gaining strength. What is true is that from the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it they’ll come in, they’ll leave. But you don’t see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain. What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We’ve made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters. But one of the things that I’ll be talking about when I see President Erdogan in Turkey and discuss this with the G20 is that we’ve still got to do more work in controlling the border so that the influx of foreign fighters is much more reduced. And you know, what we also have to do is frankly work with the Iraqis to strengthen their capabilities. Because one of the big challenges throughout this campaign has been that the Iraqi military has proven itself to be effective in protecting Baghdad. But it’s much harder for them, because they’re primarily Shia, to move out into Sunni areas. And part of our goal has to be to recruit more effective Sunni partners in Iraq to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense."