WASHINGTON – A senior White House official raised the possibility Friday of a broader American military campaign that targets an Islamic extremist group’s bases in Syria, saying the U.S would take whatever action is necessary to protect national security.
“We’re not going to be restricted by borders,” said Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
The White House said the president has received no military options beyond those he authorized earlier this month for limited airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and military aid to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. Thus far, the United States has avoided military involvement in Syria’s three-year civil war. But faced with the Islamic State making gains across the region and the beheading an American journalist, the administration’s resistance may be weakening.
Rhodes spoke a day after Obama’s top military adviser warned the extremists cannot be defeated without “addressing” their sanctuary in Syria.
Many prominent Republicans and some Democrats have called on Obama to hit back harder at the Islamic State militants.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a prospective 2016 presidential candidate, said in an interview Friday that attacking their supply lines, command and control centers and economic assets inside Syria “is at the crux of the decision” for Obama. The risk of “getting sucked into a new war” is outweighed, he said, by the risk of inaction.
To hit back at the group, Obama’s has stressed military assistance to Iraq and efforts to create a new, inclusive government in Baghdad that can persuade Sunnis to leave the insurgency. He also has sought to frame the Islamic State threat in terms that convince other countries – not just in the Mideast but also in Europe – of the need to create a broad coalition against the extremists.
Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, said in an interview this week that Baghdad’s new leadership has been told to expect additional military help once the new government is seated, possibly in early September. But an Iraqi counteroffensive may yield only temporary gains if the Islamic State retreats to areas of Syria beyond the government’s control.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday the Islamic State militants can be contained only so long and at some point their Syrian sanctuary will have to be dealt with.
“Can they be defeated without addressing that part of their organization which resides in Syria? The answer is no,” he told a Pentagon news conference where Hagel called the group a dire threat that requires an international, not just an American, response.
“That (sanctuary) will have to be addressed on both sides of what is essentially at this point a nonexistent border,” Dempsey added. “And that will come when we have a coalition in the region that takes on the task of defeating ISIS over time,” he said, using an alternate acronym for the group. “ISIS will only truly be defeated when it’s rejected by the 20 million disenfranchised Sunni that happen to reside between Damascus and Baghdad.”
Just in Iraq, Obama has difficult choices to make. Its sectarian divisions and political dysfunction created the opening that allowed Islamic State fighters to sweep across northern Iraq in June, capturing U.S.-supplied weapons that Iraqi forces left behind when they fled without a fight.
Among his options:
–Sending more troops to Baghdad to strengthen security for the U.S. Embassy, as requested by the State Department. Officials said the number under consideration is fewer than 300. They would be in addition to several hundred U.S. troops already in the capital helping to protect U.S. facilities and personnel.
–Speeding up the arming of Iraqi and Kurdish forces. The administration has been supplying Iraqi government forces with Hellfire missiles, small arms and ammunition, but critics say the pace is too slow.
–Increasing the number and expanding the role of the dozens of U.S. military advisers coordinating with Iraqi forces in Baghdad and the Kurdish capital of Irbil. They could be given more direct roles in assisting Iraqis on the ground by embedding with units in the field or scouting targets for U.S. airstrikes.
Associated Press writers Ken Dilanian, Lara Jakes, Bradley Klapper, Jim Kuhnhenn and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
