Obama considers going after ISIS as public opinion tide turns in favor of invasion

On Sunday Obama told Meet the Press he will give a speech on ISIS later this week.

The American people are coming around to a idea that the United States must attack ISIS in Iraq and Syria and this may include sending ground troops.

Rasmussen conducted a survey following Obama’s strategically planned “we don’t have a strategy” speech last month. It showed Americans were alarmed by the president’s assumed lackadaisical leadership.

“Voters regard the radical Islamic terrorist group ISIS as a major threat to the United States and are very worried that President Obama doesn’t have a strategy for dealing with the problem. They remain reluctant to send U.S. troops back to Iraq to take on ISIS, but support is growing,” Rasmussen reported on September 2.

“A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of Likely U.S. Voters consider the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) a serious threat to this country.”

This followed an incessant campaign by congressional leaders, including members of intelligence committees, who stated American and British members of ISIS will return home and engage in acts of domestic terror despite no credible evidence or specific threats.

The poll found a stunning increase in Americans who believe the U.S. should send in ground troops to deal with the Islamic State. Numbers favorable to boots on the ground increased from 12 percent to 30 percent. Remarkably, opposition fell from 71% in December to 41% now.

The increased numbers are shaped by incessant pro-war propaganda and exaggerating the threat to America from terrorists. “Belief that the United States is winning the War on Terror has plummeted to its lowest level in over 10 years of regular tracking,” Rasmussen Reports notes.
ISIS paradigm has moved war machine back on track

In addition forming public opinion and consensus, the ISIS campaign has allowed Congress to push for continued and open-ended war against largely manufactured enemies. It has also pushed other political issues to the sidelines.

“The rise of the Islamic State threat has, in a matter of weeks, turned the 2014 midterm election on its head, leaving Democrats and Republicans alike scrambling to show their hawkish side on national security and terrorism — shelving for now the partisan sparring over ObamaCare, and the multiple scandals that dominated headlines and threatened to define the Obama administration,” Fox News reported late last week.

“With just nine weeks to go before voters decide the makeup of the next Congress, ISIS, Ukraine, Gaza and Boko Haram have supplanted the IRS, Benghazi, NSA data-gathering and the VA on the lips of candidates — and the minds of voters.”

Obama has vowed to not send ground troops. “I will not allow the United States to be dragged back into another ground war in Iraq,” he said last month.

Deploying ground troops, however, will be to be the only practical way — and expensive in term of lives and capital — to confront ISIS. In response to increased airstrikes ISIS has integrated itself into society.

“A Reuters examination of three weeks of U.S. air strikes reveals significant changes in the way the ISIS operates since the U.S. joined the struggle against them, with fewer militants on the streets of Mosul the clearest sign,” Isabel Coles and Peter Apps report for Reuters.

This will, of course, result in hundreds if not thousands of dead civilians when the U.S. reenters Iraq and expands operations in Syria.

“Ousting the militants altogether will likely require a two-pronged approach, including ground combat in Iraq carried out by Iraqi security forces, Sunni tribesmen and ethnic Kurdish peshmerga fighters, perhaps with guidance by U.S. Special Operations Forces and American advisers, say Iraqi security officials and experts.”

The former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, added a third prong to this approach — a “military on the ground in Syria” in addition to airstrikes.

Morell’s suggestion if adopted will help accomplish the overriding goal in Syria — attacking and removing the al-Assad government and finally defeating its military.

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