Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, called President Obama's press conference at the closing of the 2014 NATO Summit "underwhelming," noting that it "wasn't the voice of President Reagan rallying the free world to confront a great evil, a great menace to the world today."
Gardiner told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that, although Obama's rhetoric describing ISIL was stronger than what we have seen previously from the White House, there is still a "huge amount" of questions Obama has not answered in outlining the U.S. strategy on confronting ISIL.
"I don't think the president really outlined a big-picture, coherent strategy," Gardiner said. "He used the term 'political coalition' ... This should be a military coalition of allies who are going to fight alongside the United States."
Gardiner said that, in contrast to British Prime Minister David Cameron's remarks last week, Obama's speech still did not "identify the exact nature of the threat that we are facing" and did not convey "a sense that we are fighting this global war."