I always thought it was his plan to do very little, but sound like he meant business. Dragging his feet to give them lots of time to expand and recruit. Their numbers will swell faster than they can be picked off from the air.
I heard on one of the shows, I think Fox and perhaps it was even Colonel North, that at the least we were “kicking the can down the road” but I hadn’t thought of what you said about their numbers swelling. That makes sense and would be an unintended consequence. I heard earlier on some news show that the FBI or homeland security are tailing ‘dozens’ of persons who have returned from Syria, so there is that danger as well.