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Solidarity: Obama, Cameron 'Won't Be Cowed' by ISIS

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President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say they will "not be cowed" by the Islamic terrorist group known as the Islamic State or ISIS.

The two are meeting with other world leaders at a NATO summit in Wales, Thursday, and the rise of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria is expected to dominate many discussions.

Cameron showed how seriously he takes that threat, telling the BBC that he's not ruling out any military action against ISIS. He warned that defeating the jihadist army won't be easy.

"We have to take a long term, tough, intelligent, patient view of this," he said. "We are going to have to squeeze it out of existence. It is going to take time."

Meanwhile, U.S. leaders on both sides of the aisle are signaling their willingness to work with the president on what is considered a major threat both abroad and at home.

Why is the threat of ISIS getting so much attention at the NATO Summit in Wales? CBN News Senior Editor John Waage explains this and more.

But they want the president to come up with a plan of action.

"I hope the president will come up with a plan submitted to Congress next week and I think it's highly likely that we are going to be interested in supporting him," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

"He needs to remind everybody that this is not just some Middle Eastern dispute here," he added. "These are people that want to kill us here at home."

"We will either fight them now or we will fight them later because they are not going to stop," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.

The White House has not ruled out air strikes against ISIS in Syria, and Cameron has said that he's interested in joining a nearly month-long U.S. airstrike campaign in Iraq.  

Both Cameron and Obama appear to suggest that NATO should play a role in containing ISIS, but more specifics are not yet clear.

What is clear is a heightened sense of urgency among world leaders and a belief that a united front is needed. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates has called for a coordinated international effort. 

It's also clear that ISIS is growing stronger in its quest to create a caliphate territory in the Mideast and systematically kill any who resist. 

Meanwhile, Obama has said that ISIS will "pay the price" for the deaths of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. 

Family and friends remembered Sotloff at a Wednesday night vigil in Florida.

"He was no war junkie. He merely wanted to give voice to those who had none," Sotloff Family Spokesman Barak Barfi said.

It's now become well known that the 31-year-old freelancer was an Israeli citizen but that Israel kept his Jewish faith and citizenship a secret out of concern for his safety.

U.S. intelligence officials are analyzing the video of Sotloff's deaths for clues to find his killers and other U.S. and Western hostages. They're honing in on the Syrian city of Raqqah, where they believe ISIS killed both Foley and Sotloff.

The United States and other world leaders are also working to identify citizens from their own countries that ISIS may have lured in to fight and then return home to launch attacks.

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About The Author

Heather
Sells

Heather Sells covers wide-ranging stories for CBN News that include religious liberty, ministry trends, immigration, and education. She’s known for telling personal stories that capture the issues of the day, from the border sheriff who rescues migrants in the desert to the parents struggling with a child that identifies as transgender. In the last year, she has reported on immigration at the Texas border, from Washington, D.C., in advance of the Dobbs abortion case, at crisis pregnancy centers in Massachusetts, and on sexual abuse reform at the annual Southern Baptist meeting in Anaheim