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Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama is loading new missions on the U.S. military with fast-expanding mandates and no certain end dates as he grapples with the threats posed by ISIS and Ebola.

Evolving operations in the Middle East and west Africa are causing some supporters to ask whether the president, a notoriously reluctant warrior dedicated to ending foreign entanglements and getting troops home, has changed his mind.

By committing the U.S. military to two new crises, with no clear exit strategy, Obama risks the same perilous slide into "mission creep" that hounded some predecessors, who got sucked ever deeper into wars in Vietnam, Somalia and Iraq.

Already, there are mounting questions about whether the strategy is working. A former top U.S. counterterror official told CNN Tuesday that the "imminent threat" from one of the groups targeted in an initial wave of airstrikes in Syria hasn't abated.

When Obama announced America's new war in August, he said U.S. air strikes would only take place "if necessary" and only in Iraq to save civilians from massacres by the marauding Sunni radicals and to protect U.S. personnel.

Yet less than three months later, in the newly branded Operation "Inherent Resolve," U.S. warplanes have blasted ISIS fighters, vehicles and supply lines in Syria, as well as Iraq. There are more than 1,400 troops in Iraq and hundreds more aboard ships and in nearby countries carrying out airstrikes. U.S. attack helicopters have gone into battle against ISIS in Anbar province.

READ: Ex-counterterror chief: U.S. lost track of terrorists

It is indisputable that the campaign has widened. US planes this weekend intensified air strikes on the besieged Syrian town of Kobani, and dropped arms and ammunition to Kurdish forces locked in a struggle for the strategic choke point near the Turkish border.

There is every sign the anti-ISIS operation will go on for years. And there is no clear idea of what success will look like, despite Obama's vow to destroy ISIS's "network of death."

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Obama's ISIS, Ebola "mission creep"