House leaders are working to see what they can do to prod President Obama to take tougher action against the Islamic State in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in Paris blamed on the extremist group.
Lawmakers may insert provisions into a fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill being drafted calling for a comprehensive strategy backed by a more aggressive U.S. posture, and also are considering whether to add money to a war funding account, House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry said Tuesday.
The Texas Republican is one of several committee chairmen on a task force created by House leaders to look at a number of concerns that have come up since the Paris attacks, which killed 129 and injured more than 350, and recommend new approaches.
The urgent matter on the agenda is an effort to seek a pause in the administration’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees next year until a vetting process can be designed to ensure terrorists don’t slip into the country with them. But Thornberry also noted that concerns have been raised about the Islamic State’s continuing success in recruiting foreign fighters to join its forces in Syria and the group’s ability to spread its ideas via social media, sometimes even inspiring “lone wolf” attacks.
He said lawmakers are less concerned about a specific increase in U.S. forces committed to the fight as some have proposed than they are at getting the president to develop a comprehensive strategy, noting that Pentagon officials have given Obama options to do more and the president had rejected them.
“Some of these issues are hard for Congress to force a president to do,” he said, but added: “We’re trying to push as far as we can.”
There’s a general climate of frustration among congressional Republicans over Obama’s insistence that his approach to fighting the Islamic State is working, even after deadly terrorist attacks Friday in Paris showed the growing reach of the group and raised concerns about its ability to hit the United States. Republicans have been pushing for a tougher approach against the extremists almost since the president announced last year that U.S. forces would return to Iraq to confront them as they threatened to overwhelm the country, and have harshly criticized his contention in an interview just before the Paris attacks that the group was “contained.”
“It’s pretty obvious that [the Islamic State] is not contained and it’s pretty obvious they’re not the JV team. This is a serious threat,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. “The president still has not laid out a strategy for dealing with this.”
Particularly irritating to lawmakers is the contrast between Obama’s passive approach, which relies heavily on U.S. allies in the region taking the initiative, and the quick French response to the attacks. On Monday, President Francois Hollande declared that “France is at war” before a joint session of parliament, and French jets have been pounding the Syrian city of Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate.
“It’s interesting to me that the French have carried out all these bombing runs over the past couple of days all on targets that we gave them,” Thornberry told reporters.
“Why are there ISIS HQs, training camps & ammo depots in Raqqa for France to bomb? Shouldn’t we have already taken those out?” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., tweeted to Obama on Tuesday.
Thornberry said he wants a four-star commander appointed to lead the fight to help restore allies’ confidence in the U.S. effort, noting that Obama’s largely passive approach has led some to believe Washington isn’t serious. The current leader is Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, a three-star general.
“I’m trying to figure out how do we get greater focus on success on the ground instead of these token efforts,” Thornberry said.
