NEW YORK – US President Barack Obama has ruled out deploying US ground forces against the Islamic State (IS) and said that defeating the extremists depends on Middle Eastern troops joining the fight.
“I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq,” Obama told US troops at a base in Florida. “After a decade of massive ground deployments, it is more effective to use our unique capabilities in support of partners on the ground.”
His comments follow those of Gen Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said he would recommend ground troop operations if a coalition of some 40 countries failed to defeat IS, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL.
Obama plans to extend airstrikes from Iraq to Syria and militarily back Kurds, Iraqis and moderate parts of the Syrian opposition in a bid to thwart Islamist militants, who have committed atrocities while carving out a caliphate across Iraq and Syria.
“We’ll use our air power. We will train and equip our partners. We will advise them and we will assist them. We will lead a broad coalition of countries who have a stake in this fight,” Obama said. “This is not simply America versus ISIL – this is the people of the region fighting against ISIL.”
Meanwhile in Congress on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged lawmakers to pass legislation so the US can arm and equip moderate members of Syria’s opposition, which is battling Islamists and government forces.
“In Syria, the on-the-ground combat will be done by the moderate opposition, which serves as the current best counterweight in Syria to extremists like ISIL,” Kerry said. “That is one of the reasons why it is so critical that Congress authorize the opposition train-and-equip mission.”
US jets and drones carried out seven airstrikes in Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday, hitting an armed IS vehicle at Haditha Dam and two more northwest of Erbil, the Pentagon said. Four strikes southwest of Baghdad struck IS ground units and a small re-supply boat on the Euphrates River. The US has carried out 174 strikes since August.
Extending US airstrikes to Syria is awkward for Washington, amid legal concerns and because bombing IS could bolster Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of atrocities against civilians during a three-and-a-half year uprising against his rule.
Wayne White, a former State Department official and analyst at the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based think tank, warned that US-led coalition-building was getting an “iffy response” in the Middle East and even among European NATO-members.
“The last thing Washington needs is more trouble in extracting commitments for concrete military action from its allies,” he told Rudaw. “There have been statements that a number of allies, including those in the region, are prepared to participate militarily. Most of these assertions, however, have stopped short, perhaps ominously, of specifics.”
Fierce battlefield tactics and as many as 50,000 fighters have helped IS win swathes of Iraq and Syria, where $1 million daily revenues from ransoms and oil boost a self-declared caliphate that imposes centuries-old holy rules on some 6 million people.
Efforts against IS increased following the release of videos showing the beheadings of American journalists and the British aid worker David Haines as well as mass executions of captured Kurdish and Iraqi troops and attacks on Christian minorities.
Some 12,000 foreign fighters have travelled to Syria in the past three years, including more than 1,000 Europeans and more than 100 Americans who could return and launch terror strikes in the West. Obama will tackle foreign fighter flows at a UN Security Council meeting on September 25.
