President Obama held a press conference to address the beheading of an American journalist by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS and made an unusually strong denouncement of an Islamic group.
“The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people. We will be vigilant and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done. And we act against ISIL, standing alongside others,” President Obama said, referring to the group by their previous name, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The President went on to denounce the group has not being a religious group at all because of their extreme views and actions.
“No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day,” the President said. “ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.”
The President ordered the U.S. military to continue to conduct air strikes against positions of the terrorists in northern Iraq. After the President’s address, the military carried out a series of strikes against terror positions near the country’s biggest dam to help support Iraqi and Kurdish troops who recaptured the dam earlier this week.
The President also spoke of the victim of the killing, photojournalist James Foley.
“Jim Foley’s life stands in stark contrast to his killers,” President Obama said.
All U.S. airlines are now required to have authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration or another U.S. governmental agency before flying in the airspace above Iraq.
All flights are prohibited “due to the potentially hazardous situation created by the armed conflict” according to the agency.
The announcement came after two airstrikes that targeted the Islamic State militants outside of Erbil.
Officials stated that the FAA’s ban will be reevaluated by the end of the year.
“Today, America is coming to help,” President Obama stated after authorizing airstrikes in northern Iraq against the Islamic State.
After weeks of weighing options, the administration took action due to the unrelenting progress of the Islamic extremists and the mounting humanitarian crisis.
The most recent crisis involves the Yazidis, a small religious minority, who are currently trapped on a mountaintop after fleeing their homes and are surrounded by Islamic militants. The United States has made several airdrops containing food and water to the thousands of trapped Yazidis, but only recently took action against the surrounding Islamic militants.
Despite a deeper involvement in the conflict, President Obama assured the public that it would not lead to U.S. involvement in a ground war in Iraq.
On Thursday night, President Obama authorized U.S. military action against the Sunni extremist advance on the Kurdish capital of Erbil leading to the first of many strikes that hit Islamic State artillery positions in northern Iraq.
Five hundred pound bombs were dropped by U.S. F-18 fighters just outside of Erbil according to the Pentagon.
President Obama claims the goal of these strikes is to stop militants from seizing Erbil and aiding the Yazidis, a religious minority.
Washington has considered direct military involvement in the past, but has delayed action for two reasons: the slowing of the Sunni militants advance in the past and to pressure Iraqi lawmakers to form a new government that might counter the militants.