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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Obama Promises Sustained Effort to Rout Militants - New York Times

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Middle East |Obama Promises Sustained Effort to Rout Militants



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Play Video|3:31

Speech Excerpt: Obama on ISIS Strategy



Speech Excerpt: Obama on ISIS Strategy



The president said the United States would lead a coalition against ISIS and laid out the four parts of the strategy.


September 10, 2014. Pool photo by Saul Loeb





WASHINGTON — President Obama said Wednesday night that he was ordering a significantly expanded military campaign against Sunni militants in the Middle East that includes American airstrikes in Syria and the deployment of 475 more military advisers to Iraq. But he sought to dispel fears that the United States was embarking on a repeat of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


In a televised speech from the State Floor of the White House, Mr. Obama said the United States was recruiting a global coalition to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the militants, from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He warned that the effort would require years of sustained effort.


“We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are,” Mr. Obama said. “That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” ISIL is an alternative name for ISIS.



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The president took pains to distinguish between the military action he was putting in motion and the two wars begun by his predecessor, President George W. Bush. He likened this campaign to the targeted airstrikes that the United States has carried out for several years against suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, few of them ever made public.




Play Video|1:52

ISIS’ Goals and Tactics Worldwide



ISIS’ Goals and Tactics Worldwide



Some background on goals, tactics and the potential long-term threat to the United States from the militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.


By Natalia V. Osipova and Christian Roman on September 10, 2014. Reuters

After enduring harsh criticism for saying in a news conference two weeks ago that he did not have a strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria, Mr. Obama sketched out a plan that will involve heightened American training and arming of moderate Syrian rebels to fight the militants. Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide bases for the training of those forces.


The White House has asked Congress to authorize the plan to train and equip rebels — something the Central Intelligence Agency has been doing covertly and on a much smaller scale — but Mr. Obama said he already had the authority necessary to expand the broader campaign.


“These American forces will not have a combat mission — we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq,” Mr. Obama pledged, adding that the broader mission he was outlining for American military forces “will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; it will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”


For all his efforts to reassure the public, Mr. Obama’s remarks were a stark admission of the threat posed by the militants, whose lightning rampage through Iraq and Syria and videotaped beheading of two young Americans has reignited fears of radical terrorism.


The president’s remarks, on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will thrust the United States into a civil war in Syria that he had long sought to avoid, and return the country to a significant military presence in Iraq, from which Mr. Obama withdrew the last American combat soldiers at the end of 2011.


The president’s speech came after a frenzied effort to line up the support of partners worldwide to combat ISIS. Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Obama called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to enlist his support for a plan to bolster the training and equipping of moderate Syrian rebels.


“The president and the king agreed on the need for increased training and equipping of the moderate Syrian opposition,” the White House said in an unusually extensive briefing for reporters on the call. “President Obama welcomed Saudi Arabia’s support for this program.”


Mr. Obama is acting against a backdrop of rapidly shifting public opinion as polls show that a large majority of Americans now favor military action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even as they express deep misgivings about the president’s leadership on the world stage.


Mr. Obama is also facing political challenges on Capitol Hill, where Republicans lawmakers, initially reluctant to demand congressional authorization of military action, have begun agitating for a vote at the same time that some Democrats are warning of a stampede to war.


But Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday prepared legislation to expressly authorize the American military to train Syrian rebels. House Republicans appeared ready to follow their lead.



The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video


A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.


Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, abruptly called off a vote on a stopgap spending bill that was planned for Thursday to reconsider Mr. Obama’s request that language be including authorizing the training of the rebels. The president called the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, to plead his case.


The flurry of activity means that Congress is likely to weigh in on the looming military action before the midterm elections in eight weeks. House Republicans have called an emergency meeting for Thursday morning to discuss their options, and leaders are leaning toward a vote to express some support for a broader campaign against ISIS.


The political atmosphere on Capitol Hill was further roiled by the sudden appearance of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who implored Republicans to support military action and blamed what he called an “arbitrary and hasty” withdrawal in 2011 by Mr. Obama for the chaos in Iraq


Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and close political ally of Mr. Obama, rejected Mr. Cheney’s critique as an unwelcome echo of the Iraq war, saying, “I think we want to be careful that we don’t engage ourselves for a long period of time in a long-term war involving the vulnerability of our troops for a long period of time.”


For Mr. Obama, the speech amounts to a strategy for a problem he has long said would defy an American remedy: sectarian strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in neighboring countries with deeply disaffected minorities and no history of democratic governance.


Among the difficult challenges to the strategy: How will the United States and its allies reinvigorate a moderate Syrian opposition that has been fractured, depleted and marginalized by more extremist forces? How can the United States act against ISIS in Syria without benefiting President Bashar al-Assad, who is also at war with the militants?


Perhaps most difficult, how can the United States wage a lengthy military campaign against a Sunni militant organization without stirring up new terrorist threats in this volatile region?


Mr. Obama’s remarks were unlikely to allay those concerns. He warned that the United States was embarking on a long-term campaign of heightened military activity.


Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, embraced Mr. Obama’s plan for military training on Wednesday, even as he expressed opposition to deploying American ground troops.


“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,” Mr. Reid said. “The president has tried to get that from us, and we should give it to them.”


The prospect of expanding the war on ISIS had already become political fodder before the president’s speech. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, denounced what he called Mr. Obama’s weak and failed foreign policy. But he will be hard-pressed to oppose the pending vote, which could come as soon as this week.


“The president has now declared that defeating ISIL is his objective,” Mr. McConnell said. “That’s a good start. But Americans don’t want a lecture. They want a plan — a credible, comprehensive plan to deal with this menace that clearly wants to harm us here at home, and that is only becoming stronger.”




Jonathan Weisman, Eric Schmitt and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.



A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: OBAMA PROMISES SUSTAINED EFFORT TO ROUT MILITANTS.




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