( CNN ) -- When President Barack Obama said recently that `` we do n't have a strategy yet '' to defeat the Islamic State -- also known as ISIS or ISIL -- many people were scandalized . Columnists attacked him for what they said was his admission of a deep failure . His own staff had to run around defending and explaining what he said . It was seen as a terrible blunder . Maybe it was . Or maybe it was n't . The truth is that 13 years after the September 11 attacks , the United States does not have an effective strategy for dealing with radical Islamists and their deep commitment to waging war against us and against our civilization . Much like the man who has a hammer and therefore assumes every problem is a nail , our bureaucracies have tried for 13 years to redefine the problem into something they are comfortable dealing with . Two long , bitter wars -- Afghanistan is now the longest war in American history , four years longer than the American Revolution and almost three times the length of American participation in World War II -- have not made America and its allies safer . The emergence of the Islamic State , as the terror group calls itself , is a further reminder that the analysis and predictions of the intelligence community , the military and the State Department have often been just plain wrong . Islamic State controls vast regions in two countries and has substantial military equipment . It is not just a new problem in nation-state relations . Whether to engage it inside Iraq or Syria is not the key question . Instead , the most important aspect about Islamic State is that it is a vector for attracting , training and preparing foreign terrorists from all over the world . Islamic State comprises 10,000 potential terrorists from more than 50 countries . Estimates vary widely on how many Americans have gone Syria to join ISIS and other extremist groups . Some officials say dozens have gone ; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers says `` hundreds . '' At least one of them , from Minneapolis , was recently killed . Why it took Obama so long to address his no ISIS strategy comments . More than 500 potential terrorists are believed to have traveled from Great Britain to join ISIS . It 's believed that the two American journalists were beheaded by the same man , and experts believe he is from England . British Prime Minister David Cameron has begun to recognize the depth and power of the terrorism crisis . He is proposing a series of major legal changes in Britain to eliminate would-be terrorists from British life . There will be even more draconian laws proposed in the near future if this conflict escalates . We are facing a new kind of crisis in the rise of radical Islamists who spread their ideology worldwide through the Internet and through human networking . It is a global phenomenon and the analytical models and strategic patterns that have worked with nation-states will simply fail when applied to the Islamic State and its fellow terrorists in Hamas , Boko Haram , Libyan militants , Yemeni jihadis or any other group . We need a new analysis with new language and new strategies that relate to defeating a viral system that spreads across national boundaries . We 're better off with a president who does n't have a good strategy and knows he does n't than with a president who has a bad strategy but thinks he has a good one . For most of his administration , the president was firmly in the latter category , so his recent epiphany marks an improvement . If there is a silver lining in President Obama 's disastrous foreign policy , it has been in awakening Americans and perhaps even the President himself to the need for a profound rethinking of our approach to radical Islamism .
Critics pounced when President Obama said `` we do n't have a strategy yet '' to defeat ISIS . The president has not defined what he means by that, and the Pentagon is still working on its own plan for defeating ISIS. But it 's true -- 13 years after 9/11 , we do n't have strategy for defeating extremists . Gingrich : We need a new strategy toward a whole new breed of extremists . He says it 's better if you have no good strategy and know it than to implement a bad one .