President Obama is asking Congress for authority to battle the Islamic State, but the White House emphasized Monday that its upcoming conference on violent extremism isn’t just about Muslim extremists.
“It features some of the longer-running terrorist threats that people forget about such as FARC in Columbia,” a senior administration official said. “I think we will see through the complexity of the discussion that extremism is a broader trend. There are lessons to be learned to counter all types of violent extremism.”
The White House is hosting a conference this week on violent extremism, which it had delayed for about six months. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson first announced the conference in September, as concerns mounted about Islamic State aggression and its efforts to recruit fighters.
President Obama will speak Wednesday and Thursday at the conference, which officials said will focus on how private and community leaders can work with the government to counter extremism.
“The federal government doesn’t have all the answers,” a senior administration official said. “This is about building a comprehensive network to fight back against violent extremism.”
Asked whether Obama would use the opportunity to announce any new military policies or actions, officials said to “stay tuned.”
The conference comes as Obama seeks congressional authorization for three years of combat against Islamic State militants. The administration’s request for authorization of military force includes an undefined limit on the use of American ground troops. But the authorization, which was made public last week, would allow the president to expand the war to any country. Obama has been ordering airstrikes in Iraq and Syria for more than six months, and the Islamic State is active far beyond the Levantine region from which the White House derives its preferred acronym, “ISIL,” for the pan-Islamic force.
Most recently, Islamic State terrorists released a video on Sunday featuring members executing 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya. Egypt has launched a military response to that atrocity. The Islamic State has been expanding its reach since declaring the formation of a religious state in June, and jihadists from around the world — including the United States, Great Britain, Canada and continental Europe — have been flooding into Syria and Iraq to join the group’s global offensive.
“You can call them what you want. We’re calling them terrorists and the president is absolutely resolved to confront this threat,” a senior administration official said. “We are not treating these people as part of a religion, we’re treating them as terrorists.”
There’s a chance the president’s proposal could pass Congress, but the request for authorization is getting criticized by some Democrats — who are hesitant to get involved in another long war — and Republicans, who say the plan unduly limits the United States.
House Speaker John Boehner said Sunday he doesn’t think “that’s smart.”
