NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw accused President Obama of demonstrating "benign neglect" toward the expansion of the Islamic State terrorist organization Sunday on Meet The Press.
This comes after a week in which Obama received sharp criticism from across the political spectrum for his response to the Paris terrorist attacks carried out by IS, as well as his insistence that he had the "right strategy" to fight the organization and that IS was "contained." Obama grew impatient with reporters when asked repeatedly about his earlier underestimations of IS and whether he knew the right way to destroy the organization.
"The fact is, that the president with what I would call kind of benign neglect about the continuing expansion of ISIS, the more sophistication [sic] of it all the time, has to come to a halt," Brokaw said.
Brokaw, a longtime NBC anchor and now a frequent panelist on many network programs, grew blunt as the show drew to a close.
"I don't want this broadcast to end without all of us dealing with a new reality," Brokaw said. "We're at war. Paris has changed the place of America in this war against ISIS, and it is now a war. It's not going to be a ground war, with the United States sending in 20 to 40,000 troops up against ISIS. It's very complicated. We're going to have a greater presence in Iraq to protect the Iraqi government so it doesn't fall."
Brokaw said the U.S. would have to deploy more special forces in Iraq to go against ISIS, as well as control the aerospace without much help from its European allies.