By the time Barack Obama spoke to the nation Wednesday night, the morning of Thursday, Sept. 11, had dawned in more than half of the world. Listening to this president say, "We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm," reminded us of one enduring lesson from 2001: No American president ever will treat casually the anniversary of global terrorism's greatest coup.
Obama's speech explaining why he will press a more muscular and perhaps yearslong military campaign to stop a terror group in its blood-soaked tracks can't have come easily to a president who frequently had assured Americans that "the tide of war is receding." Instead he committed himself to further loosing American firepower, and American personnel, in West Asia. In 2008 and 2012, candidate Obama spoke often of extricating U.S. warriors from that very region.
Obama did the talking Wednesday night, but that speech really was about the American people and the Islamic militants who have threatened assaults on this country and its interests overseas.
The militants' documented cruelties, the beheadings of two U.S. journalists included, no doubt angered some Americans and frightened others. What's certain is that while presidents sometimes lead public opinion and other times follow it, this case involves both: Obama was talking to a populace that abruptly has developed a hawkish desire for military action. Two public opinion surveys this week suggested that the campaign Obama described will, at least for now, have support:
On Tuesday a Washington Post-ABC News poll put Americans' support for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq at 71 percent, and for airstrikes in Syria at 65 percent. The Iraq percentage is up from 45 percent in June and the Syria percentage is more than double the support a year ago for airstrikes to punish Syria's regime for using chemical weapons.
On Wednesday a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll reported that, by a margin of 61 percent to 13 percent, respondents said military action against the militants is in America's national interest. Some 47 percent said the U.S. is less safe than before 9/11 by far the highest share in the 13 years that the pollsters have asked that question.
The president's diagnosis: "ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region including to the United States." True enough.
But while we appreciate the president's opinion that he has the legal authority to proceed as he plans, we don't understand why Congress shouldn't debate his strategy and endorse it. Many House and Senate members of both parties have been free with their opinions that Obama's foreign policy in general and toward Islamic State in particular has been too weak or too muscular. What looks like their collective unwillingness to take stands on an extended military campaign that will put many Americans in harm's way is inexcusable.
So, for all of Wednesday night's heartening talk of building "a broad coalition" to press this fight, it will happen because the president of the United States says it will happen. Coalitions are desirable yet slippery things; if partners later peel off, he who convened the coalition can't retreat from the battlefront.
The test for Obama, with the answer soon to unfold before all of us, is whether Commander-in-Chief Obama is in this to win a war of his declaration, or if a president ambivalent about the use of force instead sends Americans to fight a halfhearted mission. The president, having watched several of his own assurances, promises and threats boomerang, may need to take steps tomorrow that he doesn't anticipate today. That's why, after much reluctance, he wound up launching an Iraq-like surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan.
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Obama takes a more hawkish America to battle