Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz discussed the "long-term negative implications" of a potential ISIL takeover in Iraq Wednesday night on One America News' The Rick Amato Show.
"They've taken a large swath of Iraq, and they're using it to gain both money and military resources for their battles in Iraq as well as in Syria," Gertz said. "This is an unfolding, dangerous situation that has long-term negative implications for the United States. If these guys were just terrorists that were going to stick around in Syria and Iraq, my view is it'd be fine if they would kill each other. But they have aspirations to try and kill us, and that's really the problem, and that's why it's got to be dealt with in some fashion here."
The crisis also has implications for the Syrian civil war, as ISIL will be one of the better-armed groups involved in that conflict. There "aren't a lot of good options" for the Obama administration with this new situation in Iraq, Gertz said.
"The overall solution though is not going to be kinetic," he said. "It's got to be some type of ideological counter against this Islamist group. It's something that neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations has been willing to do, but that's ultimately the long-term solution."