Rice: Al-Baghdadi death ‘doesn’t mean we can declare mission accomplished and just walk away’

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday that while the death of ISIS leader Abu Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is “a major milestone,” steps will need to be taken to ensure the terror organization does not regroup.

“Obviously it’s a major milestone and it’s one that we all should be welcoming, but it doesn’t mean that the fight against ISIS is over and it doesn’t mean we can declare ‘mission accomplished’ and just walk away,” Rice said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

{mosads}“What we’ve seen time and time again in this part of the world is that when the pressure is relieved on terror organizations they can reconstitute,” she added.

Rice told host Margaret Brennan that the U.S. “need[s] to maintain a meaningful presence so we can ensure the pressure stays on ISIS and they don’t come back, roaring.”

.@AmbassadorRice on @realDonaldTrump ‘s announcement that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid conducted by U.S. special forces: “it doesn’t mean the fight against ISIS is over.” pic.twitter.com/PJiSmhQpOL

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 27, 2019

“You can’t take the pressure off and expect these groups not to reconstitute,” she added. “They may come back with a different name and a different leader but the ideology remains and the ambition remains.”

Rice also told Brennan that, in keeping with “a tradition of common courtesy,” then-President Barack Obama informed his predecessor former President George W. Bush of the raid in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011 in keeping with protocols.

But she noted that since Trump did not inform congressional leaders of the raid in Syria in which al-Bhagdadi died, she’s “quite confident they didn’t do the normal protocol with respect to predecessors.”