House Republican leaders moved quickly Thursday to broadly support President Obama’s plan for an open-ended campaign to combat the Islamic State — but the mechanics of how they will do so remain open for debate and are expected to take several days.
The day after Obama’s national address, GOP leaders were mulling exactly how to handle the president’s request to explicitly authorize the training and arming of foreigners to combat the Islamic militants.
Congress is “at the beginning stages of building the kind of support that is needed across the nation to carry out this plan,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters Thursday. He said that many Republicans are skeptical of the policy laid out by Obama.
“If our goal is to eliminate ISIL, there is a lot of doubt of whether the plan that was outlined last night will accomplish that,” he said, but added later: “It’s important to give the president what he has asked for.”
Be still my heart! Surely the GOP isn’t going to give President Obama what he has asked for. I will believe it when I see it.
Should Congress back the Obama plan to defeat ISIS? Lip service or money? How much should Congress be involved?
Once Congress is involved, don’t they start getting security briefs? How long before they start leaking information?
So, here we go – the nations that are most vulnerable to the threat of ISIS does not really want to engage – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/world/middleeast/arabs-give-tepid-support-to-us-fight-against-isis.html?_r=0 Time for us to avoid the situation. IF THEY do not have a problem with ISIS then we are not going to be able to solve anything. ISIS will find shelter in any of these nations – will we target facilities in Saudi Arabia or Jordan?
Is ISIS the threat that it is being made out to be – I remember one called Saddam Hussein who was not such a threat (he was a bad dude for sure). It is time for the West to handle the middle east differently – it is their fight. When we go in to protect them, they will bash us for imperialism. Lets stop this cycle of repeating failure after failure defeating the latest threat in the middle east.
@Pat.Herve
I actually agree with you Pat.
I mean, you don’t want a President or our country acting in a unilateral manner. That would make President Obama to be some sort of cowboy. 😉
That said, Turkey is helping ISIL. No country will bomb Syria……and I wonder why Obama wants to.
The GOP is as clueless as the Democrats on this.
You either go in to win and destroy ISIS or you do not go in. IF the locals don’t mind ISIS…..why should we?
Well, I guess we are not at war with ISIL.
Hey, ISIS, pay no attention to those bombs. Yes…yes…I KNOW that you said that you were at war with us. I KNOW that you said that you were going to strike targets in the US and kill Americans.
But, that doesn’t matter. Sec. of State said that we are not at war with ISIL: “What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation. It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.”
Everyone KNOWS that counterterrorism isn’t warfare. Its just a form of ….hightened….police work….Yeah! That’s it. Its a police…..ACTION!
Wait……. didn’t we have one of those before?
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf rejected the expression “war on terrorism” during a briefing Thursday while answering questions on President Obama’s strategy to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
“Is that something that’s out of the lexicon now of the U.S. government’s comments on what’s happening?” a reporter asked.
“It’s certainly not how I would refer to our efforts,” Harf said.
_______________________
So….. Her boss said that it is counter-terrorism. A war on terror is counter-terrorism.
NO ONE has a freaking strategy or knows how to define our intended actions or enemy.
Until we do know what we intend to do, we need to stay the hell home.
These incompetents couldn’t organize a troop of Boy Scouts to go camping.
So is ‘counter-terrorism’ the new ‘over seas contingency operation’? I’m starting to get confused now…
So is the GOP now just waging ‘counter-terrorism against women’ or are the still waging a ‘war on women’? Which is it?
War has been waged on women by plenty of people other than the GOP.
Have you read that Margaret Sangor autobiography yet?
Rear Admiral John Kirby, spokesman at the Pentagon, says we are “at war” with ISIL in the same way we have been at war with al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Check tomorrow to see if he still has a job.
Maybe we should just stop all the speculation and opinionating until we see what POTUS and his military/security chiefs actually come up with as a battle plan. I say give them some space to work. And check our usual tendency to call for swift results. It is going to take awhile to dig those rats out of their nests. Take it from an old rat chaser.
I think that you are right, Wolve. I like the idea of you being an old rat chaser. Too funny.
Let’s see… Mission and Treasure Lost, Victory surrendered, no overarching plan or concept for the region, the locals cannot rely on us enougth to risk getting involved and must continue to pay bribes, our allies don’t trust us with only their boots on the ground, neither Assad or ISIL is afraid of us, Iran is laughing at us, Russia is looking to fill the vacume and to expand here and there – oh, and China now as a modern Navy bigger than ours and … you can’t blame Bush this time.. Nope does not look good.
How sad that you feel this way about your own country.
I just feel sorry for you.
@blue
While I agree with most of what you said…this part: “China now as a modern Navy bigger than ours” is not true.
Let me rephrase.
Bigger? How? Numerically or tonnage?
The vast majority of their navy is corvettes, gun boats, and missile boats.
We’re talking ships that are about 4000 tons or less….MUCH less. The missile boats and gun boats don’t reach 1000 tons.
While they may have MORE small craft, we have larger, more capable craft. Our naval capabilities far outstrip any nation in the world today, including Russia and China. Russia, too, with the addition of captured Ukrainian ships, outnumbers our navy. But even in the USSR days….our capabilities were much greater. Today…the Russian navy is but a shell of the their former abilities.
@Moon-howler
I feel sorry for our country. We have incompetents in charge.
@Cargosquid
I fee sorry for our country because so many are so blind to the incompetence.
Based on the below statements, we should absolutely NOT be involved.
http://www.qando.net/2014/09/16/a-formula-for-failure/ : this analysis is dead on.
“In Paris on Monday, two dozen governments pledged to help fight the extremists “by any means necessary, including military assistance.” But only a handful — not yet including Britain — have so far agreed to participate in air combat missions in Iraq, and none has yet signed on to support prospective U.S. air strikes in Syria. Nor is any sending combat troops.”
“The attenuated support reflects in part the complicated politics of the fight against the Islamic State, which controls a New England-size swath of territory across Iraq and Syria and commands tens of thousands of militants. Neighbors such as Turkey and Jordan are reluctant to openly join the fight, for fear of becoming targets of the terrorists. Sunni rulers are loath to fight on the same side as the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad or Iran — which, for its part, loudly declared Monday that it had rejected a U.S. cooperation proposal.”
“In large part, however, the restraint has been fostered by President Obama himself. As The Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran reported, Mr. Obama rejected the recommendation of his top military commanders that U.S. Special Operations forces be deployed to assist Iraqi army units in fighting the rebels, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the administration has turned aside troop offers by other nations. “There are some who have offered to do so, but we are not looking for that, at this moment anyway,”he told CBS News’s Bob Schieffer.”
“Mr. Kerry said Monday that defeating the Islamic State will depend in part on non-combat initiatives such as discrediting its ideology, stopping the flow of jihadist volunteers and providing political and material support to the new Iraq government.”
I bet if Mr. Cheney had said it you would be right down there trying to re-enlist.
@Moon-howler
If Cheney had said what?
The above statements?
Why would I do that? The statements show rank incompetence and confusion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress-poised-to-approve-obamas-iraq-syria-military-strategy-amid-skepticism/2014/09/17/c2494df2-3e85-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html
Well, the House passed the money amendment for Obama.
I actually support the Democrats and Republicans that voted NO.
Rep. Moran has this idiotic thinking to support his vote: “It’s because there are no better alternatives and I don’t think it’s responsible to do nothing.”
So, in other words…..doing SOMETHING, ANYTHING, regardless of whether it works or not, whether it gets people killed for nothing….is better than doing “nothing.” And he ignores the fact that doing “nothing” allows people to find alternatives.
If that is the logic supporting a YES vote, we really are being represented by incompetent boobs.
And Hell is freezing over. I’m agreeing with Tim Kaine:
In anticipation of a bigger debate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) unveiled proposed language for a measure granting Obama the authority to conduct further military action in Iraq and Syria. His measure would repeal the current congressional authorization for military force in Iraq; prohibit the deployment of U.S. combat forces in Iraq and Syria; and expire after one year. Most importantly, Kaine said, his proposal would define the types of “associated forces” that the U.S. could partner with in the region, including Iraqi and Kurdish military forces.
“If they won’t participate and carry the ground campaign, there’s no amount of U.S. or western troops that will enable this mission to be successful,” he said.
If Obama wants to go to war…..then he needs Congressional authority. He has no authority to fight in Iraq. THAT “war” for us…is over and ended when the troops came home.
I’m not sure where the Turks actually are on this or will be in the future, even though they have forbidden air sorties against Syrian territory from American bases in Turkey. Their Israel-hating PM is a religio-ideological wild card in this, in my opinion. And they have already been engaged in a way against the Syrian regime itself. Nevertheless, we should not forget that, when Mosul fell, ISIL took about 40 Turkish diplomats and other Turks hostage and still holds them. Some of the hesitancy may come from not wanting to see all those Turkish heads roll, so to speak, and getting domestic blowback from it. Another thorny question for our planners to face.