WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will go on the offensive against the Islamic State group with a broader counterterror mission than he previously has been willing to embrace, U.S. officials said Monday. The new plan, however, won't commit U.S. troops to a ground war against the insurgency and instead will rely heavily for now on the help of allies.
Obama's more aggressive posture -- which officials say will target Islamic State militants comprehensively and not just to protect U.S. interests or intervene to resolve humanitarian disasters -- reflects a new direction for a president who campaigned to end the war in Iraq and has generally been reluctant to use U.S. military might since he took office in 2009.
He is to describe his plans in a speech Wednesday.
The U.S. has already launched more than 100 airstrikes against militant targets in Iraq. Now, after the beheadings of two American freelance journalists, Obama is considering expanding that campaign into Syria, where the Islamic State has a safe haven. Obama has long avoided taking military action in Syria, concerned about indirectly assisting President Bashar Assad and his government in Damascus, but the White House suggested Monday that the U.S. could be moving in that direction.
Asked whether the president has made a decision to use military force in Syria, spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama was willing "to go wherever is necessary to strike those who are threatening Americans."
As he weighs his next move, Obama solicited advice Monday from prominent foreign policy experts from across the political spectrum over dinner at the White House. Among the guests invited to join Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were former national security advisers from the Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter administrations, as well as Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and former Acting CIA Director Michael Morrell.
The U.S. has for years launched limited drone strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The current strikes in Iraq, which began Aug. 8, have involved both drones and manned fighter jets.
At the time of Obama's speech Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry will be in the Mideast to meet with leaders from Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He will gauge whether Arab nations might be willing to join a coalition that includes the U.S. and nine allies -- mostly in Europe, plus Australia and Canada -- that last week agreed to crack down on the Islamic State.
"We look forward to working with the international community and our neighbors in the continuing struggle against the terrorists who threaten us all," Lukman Faily, Iraq's ambassador to the U.S., said Monday.
In Cairo, meanwhile, the 22-nation Arab League agreed to take urgent measures to combat the Islamic State through political, defense, security and legal means. It also backed the United Nations resolution issued last month that imposed sanctions on a number of the group's fighters and called on countries to adopt measures to combat terrorism.
Beyond airstrikes, much of the international strategy against the Islamic State covers the same ground as it has for the past several months.
Two senior officials said the U.S. will continue to crack down on foreign fighters and funding flowing to militants, and strengthen Iraqi government forces and moderate Syrian rebels in their respective battles against the Islamic State. The U.S. also aims to persuade the new government in Baghdad that was seated Monday to give more power to its Sunni citizens in hopes of discouraging them from joining the insurgency.
Iraq's parliament officially named Haider al-Abadi the country's new prime minister late Monday and approved most of his proposed Cabinet. Al-Abadi requested an additional week to name candidates for a few posts, including the defense and interior ministers.
Outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and former Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujeifi were given the largely ceremonial posts of co-vice presidents. Kurdish politician and former Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was named as one of three deputy prime ministers. Former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari was named foreign minister.
The U.S. and other countries have been pushing for a more representative government that will ease anger among Sunnis, who felt marginalized by al-Maliki's administration, helping fuel the dramatic sweep by the Islamic State over much of northern and western Iraq since June.
Speaking before the parliament, al-Abadi vowed to "back the military operations in all the areas of confrontation against the armed gangs and the forces of terrorism and ensuring their continuation till victory is achieved."
Arab League's Stance
The Arab League resolution does not explicitly back an expanded American military operation targeting the Islamic State. It leaves room, however, for the Arab League to work with whatever approach Obama lays out.
That could give Obama enough leeway to gather support from Arab countries already divided over the Syrian civil war.
"There will be no signing on a white paper," said Mustafa Alani, the director of the security and defense department at the Gulf Research Center in Geneva. Arabs are looking for "equal efforts in changing the situation in Syria. Without it, it is a lost war."
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have for months worked to combat the Islamic State either by sharing intelligence, providing military assistance to rebels or punishing suspected foreign fighters. Broadened U.S. airstrikes would help cover Iraqi military forces, particularly the Peshmerga forces in the country's Kurdish north, and Western-backed elements of the Syrian opposition.
In Washington, the president is expected to press congressional lawmakers to approve $500 million in lethal military aid to the Syrian rebels. He proposed the aid earlier this year, but his request has stalled on Capitol Hill.
The U.S. also has pressured Sunni rulers in Kuwait and Qatar to prosecute private financiers in their nations who are believed to be funneling money to the militants.
But Western leaders still appear divided on whether to launch airstrikes in Syria. U.S. officials said Obama is leaning toward doing so as part of an international effort, and British Prime Minister David Cameron last week said he has not ruled them out. It's likely that the airstrikes, if they occur, would aim to avoid any of Assad's aircraft, landing strips or other assets that are part of Damascus' campaign to attack Sunni rebel groups that include the Islamic State.
France, however, is opposed to airstrikes or any military action in Syria that might -- even indirectly -- help Assad, according to a Western diplomat in Washington. He spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be named discussing the strategy.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters traveling with him in Turkey, said Obama must weigh the consequences of what could be a lengthy campaign.
"Once you start an airstrike, or once you start any military action, it doesn't end there. It ends up somewhere down the road," Hagel said.
Hagel has been meeting with allies over the past several days, including at the NATO summit in Wales last week and in visits to Turkey and Georgia, as part of a broad effort to pull together a coalition to fight the Islamic State militants.
But after hours of meetings in Turkey, there were no announcements Monday of what role the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan might play.
Rather, Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned on the state-run Anatolia news agency that weapons sent by Western countries to fight the Islamic State could end up in the hands of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Ankara considers a terrorist group.
"We have expressed our concerns," Cavusoglu said. "It may not be possible to control where these weapons will go."
The West is pressing Turkey to shut its borders with Syria and Iraq to restrict the travel of Islamic State militants and keep foreign fighters from joining the battle. The U.S. also wants to be able to use Turkish military bases to begin operations, including airstrikes, on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
Talks with Lawmakers
During his trip, Hagel also has been talking to members of Congress by phone about Obama's Wednesday remarks. He said that in those conversations there has been broad agreement that the Islamic State militants must be destroyed.
Hagel said some lawmakers don't believe Obama needs any more legal authorization from Congress to broaden the fight, but other members aren't so sure. That legal question, he said, is still open, and government lawyers are looking into it.
The president plans to meet with congressional leaders today. On Monday, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan urged Congress to support the new government in Baghdad and persuade other Mideast countries to join the fight against the Islamic State.
"I hope the seriousness of the ... threat will encourage members of both parties to unify in this important cause," Levin said.
The bulk of Obama's strategy is expected to be hammered out later this month at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, where a new Security Council resolution could give Obama and his allies the legal cover and broad international backing to launch more strikes.
But U.S. officials cautioned Monday that Obama might not wait until then. The president, who has remained noncommittal about seeking congressional authorization for an expanded mission, did not seek approval for the strikes underway in Iraq, citing a request for assistance from the Iraqi government and a need to protect U.S. personnel.
Obama also plans to seek a Security Council resolution requiring governments to craft regulations and laws to thwart the flow of foreign fighters to militant groups such as the Islamic State.
Prof. Peter Neumann, a leading expert on terrorism who directs the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London, said more than 12,000 foreigners from 74 countries have gone to fight with rebels in Syria, about 20 percent to 25 percent of them from Western nations.
The Syrian conflict has sparked the most significant mobilization of foreign fighters since the 1980s war in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation, where up to 20,000 foreigners participated over the course of a decade, he said.
At a meeting Monday of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, new human-rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein forcefully condemned Islamic extremism and urged international action to end the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
Zeid, a Jordanian prince who has dispensed with his royal title as incompatible with his new post, identified the conflicts in Syria and Iraq as "the immediate and urgent priority of the international community."
Zeid said the Islamic State's brutal actions, like those of Muslim extremists across the Middle East and Africa, offered "only annihilation to Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, altogether the rest of humanity, who believe differently to them."
Information for this article was contributed by Lara Jakes, Julie Pace, Donna Cassata, Lolita C. Baldor, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sarah El Deeb, Sameer N. Yacoub, Sinan Salaheddin, Murtada Faraj, Vivian Salama, Aya Batrawy and Maamoun Youssef of The Associated Press; by Nick Cumming-Bruce and Helene Cooper of The New York Times; and by Sangwon Yoon of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/09/2014