U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden hosted a dinner meeting at the White House with several of Washington’s top foreign policy experts on Monday, according to reports.
The timing of the meeting yesterday with bipartisan guests “seemed more for Mr. Obama to give his guests, several of whom are fixtures on television talk shows and op-ed pages, a preview of the plan for confronting the threat from the Sunni militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a plan he has promised to reveal on Wednesday,” according to the New York Times.
In a new Washington Post poll, Americans overwhelmingly support taking the fight to the Islamic State. “Americans overwhelmingly view Islamic State terrorists as a serious threat to vital U.S. interests and, in a significant shift, widely support airstrikes in Iraq and Syria,” that new poll found, noting that the mood in the U.S. is “increasingly hawkish.”
A peek at the reported attendees, which include several heads of Washington’s most prominent think tanks and institutions:
Zbigniew Brezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Richard Haas, Council on Foreign Relations
Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor
Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution
John D. Podesta, Clinton’s Chief of Staff
Jane Harman, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor to George W. Bush
Sandy Berger, Strobe Talbott at POTUS, VP dinner, along w/ Kerry, Blinken, Phil Gordon, Podesta, Harman, Zbig, Hadley Morell Flournoy Haass
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) September 8, 2014
