http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/action-against-islamic-state-is-a-legacy-issue-for-president-obama/2014/09/10/63c964b2-3906-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.htmly David Nakamura September 10 at 10:20 PM
Nearly six years into a presidency devoted to ending U.S. wars in the Muslim world, President Obama faced the nation Wednesday night to explain why he has decided to engage in a new one.
Obama did not describe his authorization of direct military action to defeat the Islamic State terror group as a conventional war. To the contrary, in a prime-time address from the White House, he sharply contrasted his use of targeted but limited American force with the large-scale air-and-ground invasions launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
“This effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, casting the strategy as a “counterterrorism campaign” similar to U.S. intervention in Somalia and Yemen. “It is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible.”
But make no mistake: Obama’s escalation of airstrikes and the use of U.S. personnel to help “degrade and destroy” the extremist Sunni group represents a major setback for a commander in chief whose early international appeal was built on a pledge to remove the United States from “permanent war footing.”
“How did this group that came in determined to remedy the Bush administration’s overreach . . . end up embroiled in a far more open-ended conflict that has just as far-reaching consequences?” said Rosa Brooks, a former Obama administration official who served at the Pentagon from 2009 to 2011. “This is a legacy issue for him.”
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