US Senator Marco Rubio says the ISIL terrorist group poses an imminent threat not only to the Middle East but also to the United States as well as to Europe.
In an article for TIME magazine on Friday, Rubio, who represents Florida in the Senate, wrote that ISIL will continue to move forward to threaten US interests in the Middle East unless it is stopped.
“Its expansionist ideology will lead it to attack US allies in the region and eventually Europe and the United States,” said Rubio, a member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations and Select Intelligence Committees.
ISIL, which is operating in Iraq and Syria, “will not rest once it has taken Erbil or Baghdad,” Rubio wrote.
On Friday, the United States conducted its first airstrikes against ISIL positions near Erbil, which is the Kurdish regional capital in Iraq.
On Saturday, US President Barack Obama said that airstrikes could go on for months to protect both US personnel and religious minorities who are trapped by the militants on a mountain in northern Iraq.
“I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks,” he said. “This is going to be a long-term project.”
“We feel confident we can prevent ISIL from going up the mountain and slaughtering the people who are there,” Obama said. US troops are “positioned to strike ISIL terrorists around the mountain” to help Iraqi forces break the siege.
As many as 40,000 Iraqis belonging to the Kurdish minority Yazidi are at risk of dying from dehydration and starvation atop Mount Sinjar as militants have vowed to kill them if they descended.
ISIL terrorists have terrorized entire communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Yazidis and others, as they continue their advances in Iraq !!!