White House press secretary Josh Earnest was grilled in his first appearance on Fox News by host Shepard Smith, who directly criticized the White House’s “broad coalition,” specifically the participation of Arab states who, as Smith contends, will not help at all:
Smith: “What are we going to do if and when our airstrikes end up with civilian casualties, that they put on the internet, increase their numbers, and then this gets to something that nobody can handle? I know that’s part of the thinking, what has been decided…”
Earnest: “Well, there are two things about that Shep. The first is we are going to have Muslim majority countries, Muslim led countries who are part of this coalition. This is not going to be the United States vs. ISIL, this’ll be the international community, including the Muslim world against these extremists.”
Smith: “Like Saudi Arabia’s going to have boots over there? Or Jordan?”
Earnest: “Well, I will let the individual members of the coalition announce the commitments that they are prepared to make.”
Smith: “There will be no commitment from those two. I will bet every penny I will ever make at this network.”
Earnest: “That’s a substantial bet, Shep.”
Smith: “It is a substantial bet and it’s a good bet because it’s not going to happen and the whole world knows it. That’s why i wonder sometimes, like when the Bush administration was doing this, these questions were asked from this desk and now that you’re doing it these are fair questions that deserve answers. We have a coalition of the Muslim world, I don’t see it. No one from Saudi Arabia. No one from Jordan who has its own problems. Turkey has its own problems. We are not getting any help from any of those nations and to and to suggest that these people, with great respect, from Syria, who are not organized, and the Pentagon says it’ll take a year to train, and the Iraqi army, which has already folded and given away the weapons, are going to come together and fight ISIS for us and with us seems like, as the president once put it, something of a fantasy.”
Earnest: “Shep, these individuals will be fighting for their own country. Iraq now faces an existential threat. The president has determined that it is not in the best interest of the United States of America national security for American forces to be on the ground engaged in combat operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. What we can do though is we can degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL by implementing a coordinated counter-terrorism strategy with the support of the international community to support local forces who are taking the fight on the ground to ISIL and backing them up with American military.”