ABC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Terry Moran said Tuesday that defeating terror group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) will take a "global effort."
Moran was reacting to reports that ISIL executed American journalist James Wright Foley, who disappeared in Syria two years ago. Self-proclaimed members of the group provided graphic video that appears to show Foley's beheading at the hands of ISIL terrorists.
Moran said of the video, "It is a way of them declaring who they are, just how extreme jihadists they are. And defeating them is going to take a tremendous amount of effort on many, many fronts."
"This is not some shadowy group of hijackers and financiers and guys in caves," Moran observed. "This is now a very well-organized, well-funded, and well-armed organization that stretches over two countries and governs a great deal of territory. They also now have the loyalty of many, many disenchanted Sunni Muslims here."
Moran concluded: "Defeating ISIS is going to be a long-term project that is going to take, frankly, a global effort."