It’s not just hawkish Republicans urging President Obama to take hard line against the Islamic State. Democrats also want to see a more aggressive White House.
Obama plans to lay out his strategy for defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in private meetings with congressional leaders and in a speech to the nation on Wednesday. And, in television interviews on Sunday, top congressional Democrats said they want Obama to explain how his approach will defeat ISIS once and for all — something Democrats, like many Republicans, don’t think is possible without being active militarily in Syria.
“What I want to hear is to reassure the American public and the world that we’re standing up, we’re going to have a strategy and we’re not going to rest until we bring these people to justice and we stamp them out, because they’re a threat to the United States, to Americans, to our allies and to the world,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“We need to do, what we need to do, to take them out,” he added. “If we’re going to take ISIS out, you need to take out their leadership. You want to kill a snake, you cut its head off.”
Obama has resisted the notion that the U.S. will have to expand the theater of operations to Syria, where much of ISIS’ command and control is located. In a news conference before Labor Day, the president acknowledged that he didn’t “have a strategy yet” for combatting ISIS in Syria. Many Democrats have since joined with critical Republicans and said doing so is the only way to ensure ISIS’ defeat.
At the very least, top Democrats are saying, the president needs to speak with resolve.
“It’s time for America to project power and strength,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“You have to, as I’ve called for and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has called for, for some time, robustly help the moderates take over the ground for air strikes in Syria,” Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, added during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “I do see that coming together.”
