Obama likens ISIS to the Joker

President Obama has a new analogy for the Islamic State and Iraq and Syria (ISIS): the Joker, the nihilistic villain from “The Dark Knight,” a 2008 Batman movie.

{mosads}Obama likened the Middle East to Gotham, a corrupt city controlled by Mafia “thugs,” unsavory characters who nonetheless imposed order, according to The Atlantic.

“Then the Joker comes in and lights the whole city on fire,” Obama has said, according to advisers who then told the magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg for a lengthy piece on the president’s foreign policy legacy.

“ISIL is the Joker. It has the capacity to set the whole region on fire,” he continued, using another acronym for the group. “That’s why we have to fight it.”

Obama’s comments are a sign he previously misjudged the extremist group, which controls large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and is making inroads in Libya.

The president famously referred to the group as a “JV team” in an interview published in 2014.

According to Goldberg, that comment was sparked by Gen. Lloyd Austin, then-commander of U.S. Central Command, who called ISIS “a flash in the pan” in conversations with White House officials.

A spokesman for Austin denied that claim to Golberg. National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said Austin’s “frank and unvarnished” assessments of ISIS provided to the president “have never downplayed or minimized the challenge” the group poses.

“From the very beginning, General Austin has been clear-eyed about the long-term nature of this challenge, including during the first days of ISIL’s rise,” added Price. “The president and his team have always valued General Austin’s candid assessments.”

Regardless, Obama admitted that after terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., the former of which was conducted by ISIS and the latter inspired by the group, that he did not properly convey to the public that he understood the threat posed by terrorist groups and what he was doing to fight them.

“Every president has strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “And there is no doubt that there are times where I have not been attentive enough to feelings and emotions and politics in communicating what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”

— This report was updated on March 11 at 2:42 p.m.