Obama announces ‘broad coalition’ to fight Islamic State extremist group
. , Source - The Washington Post
President Obama addresses the nation from the Cross Hall in the White House on Wednesday. (Saul Loeb/AP)
President Obama began outlining a sweeping and long-term strategy Wednesday night for combatting the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, launching what could be the biggest counterterrorism campaign of his presidency.
“Tonight, I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade, and ultimately destroy, the terrorist group known as ISIL,” Obama said in a prime-time speech delivered from the White House.
According to prepared remarks, Obama said the offensive against the militant group will not involve combat troops but a “steady, relentless effort” through airstrikes in both countries and support for military partners on the ground.
“In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape and force women into marriage,” Obama said. “They threatened a religious minority with genocide. In acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists — Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff.”
Obama sought to make clear to a war-weary public that this new offensive will not resemble the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead will be more in the vein of other more covert missions against terrorists.
“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil,” Obama said.
“This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”
Ahead of Obama’s speech, debate over how to confront the threat moved to Congress Wednesday, where leaders were already debating legislative proposals that could bolster the president’s authority to wage war on the Islamist group. The key proposal would explicitly authorize U.S. military personnel to train foreigners to combat the militants.
If such authority is granted, it is unclear whether American military personnel would be sent into Syria to train those foreign fighters.
Support for Obama’s effort appears to be growing. House Republicans abruptly postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on a short-term spending bill in which the White House asked that the legal authority to train fighters be included. Republicans deferred the vote to consider Obama’s request.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) signaled Wednesday that he supports legislation to meet Obama’s request. “It’s clear to me that we need to train and equip Syrian rebels and other groups in the Middle East that need some help,” he said.
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she would support the move only if rebel fighters were trained “out of country” and not in Syria.
Obama has long signaled that he does not believe he needs formal congressional approval to launch airstrikes into Syria, be he is working hard to build support for his plan.
In a sign of intensified White House engagement, the president personally called lawmakers to ask for their support.
Senior House Republican aides couldn’t say Wednesday whether granting authority to train foreign troops to lead the fight against the terrorist group would be part of the spending package, which was introduced Tuesday night. House Republicans scheduled a meeting for Thursday morning to gauge members’ reactions to Obama’s speech, and lawmakers will have a chance to attend closed-door briefings with top military and national security officials Thursday afternoon, aides said.
Reid said that if the legal authority isn’t included in the House spending measure, he will introduce a standalone bill in the Senate.
Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said he received a call from Obama at 5 p.m. Tuesday asking that language giving the president authority to train foreign fighters be added to the spending bill. The call was the first of its kind Rogers has received from the president.
“I don’t recollect a previous time,” he said.
Meanwhile, the president huddled Wednesday in the White House Situation Room with his top national security advisers, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, national security adviser Susan E. Rice, CIA Director John Brennan and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The United States already has conducted 154 strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, according to the Pentagon, and has 1,043 troops stationed there. The forces include 754 U.S. personnel providing support to diplomatic security in Baghdad and 289 personnel manning two joint operations centers.
At least one European ally is willing to help the United States launch airstrikes in Iraq. On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called for other countries to join in the international fight against “this transnational danger that could reach all the way to our soil.”
Obama also seems to be receiving bipartisan support at home for his initiative, although Republicans continued to criticize how he has managed Middle Eastern affairs.
Reid said on the Senate floor that he supports Obama’s use of airstrikes and unmanned aerial drones to go after the Islamic State, calling it “a smart, strategic and effective approach.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), by contrast, said in a floor speech that Obama “has yet to find his footing when it comes to dealing with this group that clearly has the will, the means and the sanctuary it needs to do more.”
But McConnell added, “If the president develops a regional strategy, builds a combat-effective military coalition and explains how his strategy will lead to the defeat of ISIL, I believe he’ll have significant congressional support.”
That process is underway, said Jon B. Alterman, who directs the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Alterman noted that much of the administration’s effort is focused on working with several allies — including the newly formed Iraqi government as well as leaders in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Europe — and in parallel to Iran.
“The mistake is thinking this is principally a military operation,” he said. “This is principally a political operation about what political entity controls a broad swath of territory.”
As part of that diplomatic outreach, Obama called Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on Wednesday from the Oval Office as four aides, including Rice and Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, sat nearby.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John F. Kerry was spending Wednesday in Iraq, where he met with the nation’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. Abadi, who called the Islamic State “a terrorist nation,” pledged “to include all people in the Iraqi society from all sections of this society in this government and in the mobilization process” as the country sought to establish regional stability.
Kerry told Abadi that he was “very encouraged by the comments you’ve made here today and by your commitment” to make reforms that would build trust among Sunnis as well as Kurds in Iraq.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned Wednesday that the Islamic State has demonstrated “a certain level of danger that constitutes a threat” to U.S. vital interests. He said his agency, the FBI and other intelligence agencies are “making enhanced and concerted efforts” to track Syrian foreign fighters who leave or wish to enter the United States. He said the United States is working with international allies to share information about tracking Syrian foreign fighters.
Johnson said there is no credible information that the Islamic State is planning to attack the United States.
“After 13 years of war since 9/11, the decision by the president to take on a new fight against this enemy was not an easy one,” Johnson said Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “But the president recognizes the serious threat” posed by the Islamic State.
Rogers, however, said he is upset that Obama would make such a significant request at such a late hour.
“They’ve known about this problem for over a year, they’ve known that we were getting to do a [spending bill], and just as I was ready to drop it in the hopper, the president calls and asks if we would consider this,” Rogers said. “In good faith, we’re trying to get briefed up on what the request is, and it’s a complicated, big-time change in policy that I’d hate to see us attach to a continuing resolution at the very last minute.”
Source - http://www.washingtonpost.com/...a88884ffd_story.html
