When President Obama announced that he would not strike Syria without Congressional approval in 2013 following a chemical attack by Syria’s President Assad, Gulf allies of the U.S. determined to see Assad overthrown were put off at the unwillingness of a U.S. President to follow through on a previously set “red line.”
“While I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective…We should have this debate,” Obama said on August 31, 2013.
A little over a year later, President Obama will in fact conduct airstrikes on Syrian soil without that approval, but this time around, the enemy is different.
According to the Washington Post, Obama told foreign policy experts gathered at the White House that he is “prepared to use U.S. military airstrikes in Syria as part of an expanded campaign to defeat the Islamic State and does not believe he needs formal congressional approval to take that action.”
Telling those experts – who are frequent contributors on talk shows and to news outlets across the U.S. – before the general public was part of a larger strategy to “enlist the support of the nation’s political establishment to help sell their strategy to the American public, which Obama will address in a prime-time speech Wednesday night,” the Post reported.
At that meeting at the White House was 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; and Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor to George W. Bush.
Obama faces a different political climate than he did a year ago, with the nation now starting to trend to be more hawkish. A recent poll by the Washington Post found a significant turnaround in public opinion on the Middle East, with a majority favoring attacks on the ruthless Islamic State group.
The Obama Administration previously stated that it needed a different partner in Baghdad in order to successfully coordinate with the Iraqi government to defeat the extremist organization, and over the weekend, it got its wish. A new government was approved weeks after the ouster of former PM Nouri al-Maliki, which has paved the way for an increased U.S. role.
Saudi Arabia, a strong U.S. ally and trading partner in the region and recipient of America’s largest single arms sale totaling $120 billion, has called for the destruction of the Islamic State group and is escalating its own domestic crackdown on the group.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will now travel to the region and will meet with Saudi officials.
