President Barack Obama speaks about the Islamic State group, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Obama asked the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to authorize military force to “degrade and defeat” Islamic State forces in the Middle East without sustained, large-scale U.S. ground combat operations, setting lawmakers on a path toward their first war powers vote in 13 years. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) President Obama buried the lead in his request to Congress for war powers Wednesday, but he was nevertheless right for making the request.
The Islamic State, if left unchecked, he said in a letter accompanying his request, “will pose a threat beyond the Middle East, including to the United States homeland.”
That is the number one reason, though not the only reason, the United States should care about a terrorist group operating 6,000 miles from Washington, D.C. Indeed, in a sense, the group already has surpassed being a mere threat to the homeland. It has killed at least four American hostages.
Besides that, though, it has murdered or perpetrated other heinous acts on thousands of innocent people in Syria and Iraq and virtually destabilized those two countries.
Obama should have led with his strength in his White House briefing, but he was too focused on the past, opining that “the United States should not get dragged back into another prolonged ground war.” He was referring, of course, to the Iraq war begun in 2003 under his predecessor, President George W. Bush.