Tom Brokaw says that President Obama and America will flare up the Middle East with motivated young men who will want to join ISIS if America strikes against the terrorist group.
Obama announced strikes against the barbaric terrorist netowrk that is responsible for the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in a primetime speech last night.
The former anchor of the NBC Nightly News also said that America is currently battling “Islamic rage,” as opposed to actual nation-states America fought in the past.
Brokaw, a special correspondent for NBC News, made the comments on “Ronan Farrow Daily” Thursday afternoon.
“We still have a mindset in this country that when we go to war we’re fighting against nation-states. We’re fighting against Islamic rage.”
“We’re fighting against people who don’t believe in nation-states,” Brokaw continued. “They believe the state of Iraq and Syria is an Islamic State. They’re at a place thats the size of Indiana now, they’ve been extraordinarily effective what they want out of all of this,” said the veteran anchor.
“It’s going to go on for a long time because you are dealing with people who have, in my judgement, a completely distorted view of their faith, but it drives them.”
Brokaw also compared the current situation to Abu Ghraib in the 2003-04, when U.S. military police committed human rights violations against prisoners held at the U.S.-operated prison in Iraq.
“And if we begin to hit them hard in ISIS, I promise you it will light up the Middle East for young men who say ‘I want to join ISIS.’ That’s what happened when we had Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was the greatest recruiting tool that the Sunni’s had, frankly,” the anchor stated.
“People came from all over the Middle East. They brought bank accounts. They went into Syria, they got very good accounting. Then they went back into Iraq, and then they began to fight against the United States and the Iraqi-trained Army.”
“No one knows that better than Stan McChrystal, who was running special forces at the time, and he said you could see it happening.”