http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=ECD14E9F-D673-441F-9D68-D707D99779F4 Obama's challenge: Sell, don't scare
By: Josh Gerstein
September 10, 2014 05:02 AM EDT
President Barack Obama has to thread a needle in his speech Wednesday night: addressing an American public increasingly fearful about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant while trying to offer some perspective on a threat critics say he has long understated.
New polls show a majority of Americans now support broadening U.S. military airstrikes against ISIL, also known as ISIS, to combat the threat evident in recently released videotapes showing fighters from the group beheading two American journalists.
However, some analysts believe that the current public sentiment exaggerates the danger posed by ISIL, while others say Obama should not assume that publicity-driven poll numbers equate to long-term commitment by the U.S. populace to a broad campaign against the brutal militant group.
“You can say panic. It is in the air,” former State Department intelligence official Wayne White said. “It is sort of a vicious cycle in which the media has been relentless in hyping just about anything that happens and politicians have to look responsive to the public and they, of course, become more strident in what they’re urging and that again inflames the public further.”
After enduring weeks of pressure to outline a comprehensive strategy to fight ISIL, Obama is planning a prime-time speech to announce how a limited U.S. campaign against the group in Iraq will be broadened into a wider effort to defeat the group, possibly by launching American airstrikes in Syria.
However, White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday continued the cautious line Obama has taken thus far, arguing that some fears of ISIL fighters poised to swarm the U.S. surpass reality.
“I can state as unequivocally as possible that it is the assessment of the intelligence community — and this is something that’s been repeated by senior members of the intelligence community and senior members of our military leadership as well — that there is no evidence to indicate that ISIL, right now, is actively plotting to hit the homeland,” the press secretary said. “It is important for people to understand that.”
Even those who view the ISIL threat as a grave one are jittery that the public may view eradicating the group as a goal that can be carried out solely through airstrikes, when the task will require some kind of ground force in addition to political and financial pressure.
“The public will want some swift action, and airstrikes are almost always the preferred, seeminglyconsequenceless approach,” said Kathleen Hicks, a former Pentagon policy official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The risk is making Americans think this is fast or dealt with decisively in the near term.”
In a measure of the pressure Obama is under even from his usual allies, some analysts generally supportive of the president are warning against being too categorical in ruling out ground troops for what could be a lengthy and unpredictable fight.
“The president should resist using phrases like ‘boots on the ground’ or ‘ground troops,’ as any effective campaign will require U.S. intelligence and special operations personnel to be deployed on the ground in Iraq,” Shawn Brimley of the Center for New American Security wrote in a news release. “The president should state that extensive deployments of uniformed combat personnel is not something that he is considering, and that such a deployment is exactly what ISIS militants most desire.”
For Obama, who has been faulted by members of both parties for being slow to recognize the ISIL threat, the political imperative would seem to push him in the direction of embracing the new public concern and playing up the danger posed by the group.
That has not been his record in the past. In a now-famous New Yorker interview in January, he appeared to label the group as junior varsity. In June, he painted the threat to the U.S. as real but somewhat distant. “I think it’s fair to say their extreme ideology poses a medium- and long-term threat,” he told CBS.
However, intervening comments from some U.S. officials muddled that message. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel fueled public concern about ISIL by calling it an “imminent threat to every interest we have” and “beyond anything we’ve seen.” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said the group poses an “imminent threat” because of the possibility Americans or Europeans fighting with the group could return home and carry out attacks.
In an interview over the weekend, Obama struck a somewhat different tone. He told NBC there was no “immediate intelligence about threats to the homeland,” but he said that “over time … a serious threat” could emerge. Later in the interview he said: “This is a serious threat.”
Now, the prime-time address from the president seems to give the group a publicity coup of sorts.
“I think ISIS is deluded into thinking that it has achieved a major victory,” said White, now with the Middle East Institute. “It deludes itself into a fanatical belief that it will force the U.S. to commit terrible mistakes in the region that will cause people to rally to this caliphate. This is ludicrous, but this is probably how they are viewing it.”
Trying to downplay the threat posed by ISIL has become politically dangerous. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) recently came under sharp attack from the GOP for suggesting, during a political debate, that the two American journalists killed by ISIL would have backed a cautious stance toward the group. However, he was also faulted for understating the threat.
“I said last week that ISIL does not present an imminent threat to this nation, and it doesn’t,” Udall said. In a later statement, he apologized for invoking the two men and described the group as “a serious threat … critically important for the United States, our allies and countries in the region to beat back.”
Experts have pointed to several potential dangers in exaggerating the threat posed by ISIL.
The outsized assessment of ISIL could cause officials to pay less attention to other more imminent threats. In an exchange with reporters last week, counterterrorism officials said ISIL’s gains were unexpected but that the group’s fighting capacity is no match for that of Iraqi or Kurdish forces when well-equipped and motivated.
National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen also said he remains deeply concerned about groups, such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that have already attempted significant attacks aimed at U.S. airlines. “I’ve not seen any sign that their operational capability or interest has abated,” he said.
Another official said he was worried that given all the attention ISIL has received, Al Qaeda-linked groups might feel a need to assert their “primacy in the global jihad” by quickly mounting an attack.
Playing up ISIL to the point where the U.S. has little choice but to act against the group could also complicate efforts to build an inclusive Iraqi government, since officials there may think they can rely on the U.S. to keep ISIL bottled up.
“If the U.S., as appears to be the case, jumps in with both feet into this, the government in Baghdad feels less of an obligation to make sacrifices needed to woo Sunni Arabs away from ISIS,” said White, who contends the new Iraqi government U.S. officials are celebrating is less inclusive than those officials have suggested.
“As we’ve whipped ourselves up into a froth of panic and determination to really go after ISIS, there may be even less determination among members of this government to do their jobs reaching out to the Sunni Arabs,” he said, adding that could mean an even longer-term U.S. military commitment than Obama is envisioning.
