State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf still won’t disavow her earlier claim that the United States “cannot kill its way out of this war” with the Islamic State, rejecting her former boss’s suggestion that she should take a “mulligan” over the remark.
Harf set off a storm of criticism after saying that the way to defeat Islamic terrorists is to provide them with economic and political opportunities. That storm continued on Wednesday, with ex-CIA director Michael Hayden — Harf’s former boss — telling MSNBC’s Morning Joe that perhaps she should take a “mulligan in how she said what she said two days ago.”
The State Department spokeswoman didn’t agree with Hayden’s assessment. “I’m not sure I would take a mulligan on this one,” she said, “but I think [Hayden] went on to say something I would agree with. In the short term . . . we are killing them, and we will continue killing ISIS terrorists that pose a threat to us. We’re very good at that. General Hayden can to speak to that better than anyone.”
But Harf added that in “the longer term, you have to look at the root causes that lead people to extremism . . . things like governance, like opportunity.”
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