Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, salutes President Barack Obama during a Memorial Day ceremony in Arlington, Va. For three years, Obama has resisted the pull of potential U.S. military action in Syria. He has held firm even as the civil war’s death toll climbed toward 200,000, the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians and Islamic State militants strengthened amid the chaos. Now he must decide whether the extremist group’s murder of American journalist James Foley, as well as the broader threat the group could pose to U.S. interests, should change his cautious calculus.WASHINGTON – The intelligence gathered by U.S. military surveillance flights over Syria could support a broad bombing campaign against the Islamic State militant group, but current and former U.S. officials differ on whether air power would significantly degrade what some have called a “terrorist army.”
Further complicating the plans, any military action against Islamic State militants in Syria would also have the effect of putting the U.S. on the same side as Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose ouster the Obama administration has sought for years.
The Islamic State group is headquartered in the Syrian city of Raqqah and has been fighting the Assad government, though it is also at war with moderate rebels who have received arms and funding from the U.S. The group, which controls a large part of eastern Syria, crossed into Iraq earlier this year and has captured much of the Sunni sections of northern and western Iraq, prompting U.S. airstrikes to protect American personnel in that region.
U.S. officials say that surveillance drones and spy planes had begun flying over Syria on the orders of President Barack Obama, who is considering a series of military options against the extremist group that also killed an American, journalist James Foley, and is holding an American woman hostage.
In recent months, the threat from the Islamic State has eclipsed the issue of Assad, who escaped U.S. military action after Obama pulled back planned airstrikes one year ago in order to consult with Congress. The hostage-takings have galvanized a U.S. government that already had been trying to respond to the militant group’s surge with airstrikes that seem to have the public’s approval.