President Obama: We Must Organize the Arab World

by Charlie Spiering 

During a press conference in Estonia on Wednesday morning, President Obama was asked about the purpose of the NATO alliance, ahead of a conference with allies in Wales. Obama described NATO as “unique in the annals of history” because of its success but admitted that the group had to move quickly to address evolving global threats.
“We have to recognize that threats evolve, and threats have evolved as a consequence of what we’ve seen in Ukraine, but threats are also evolving in the Middle East that have a direct effect on Europe,” he said.



He added that the “international community” needed to have an “international will” to confront the threat of Islamic State terrorists.
“We know that if we are joined by the international community, we will continue to shrink ISIL to where it is a manageable problem,” he said, admitting that terrorism was a continuation of a problem since before 9/11.
Obama warned that terrorism would continue to “metastasize” in a violent way and pointed out the importance of uniting the Arab World against it.
“What we’ve got to do is make sure that we are organizing the Arab world, the Middle East, the Muslim world along with the international community to isolate this cancer,” he said.
Obama added that the “particular brand” of extremism was “first and foremost destructive to the Muslim world,” by killing innocent citizens and damaging their economies.
“They are falling behind because of this very small and narrow, but very dangerous segment of the population and we’ve got to combat it in a sustained effective way, and I’m confident that we’re going to do that,” he said.