Obama to lay out strategy against Islamic militants

|By TAP Staff|President Obama is planning a speech Wednesday to outline a broader offensive against Islamic militants in the Middle East, a move welcomed by a number of key congressional leaders who have come to view the insurgent group as an increasingly menacing threat to the U.S, Los Angeles Times reported.

Foreshadowing his remarks to the nation, Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it was time for the U.S. to “start going on some offense” to beat back the militants of the Islamic State militant group, also referred to as ISIS.

“What I want people to understand is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum” of the militants, he said. “We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately, we’re going to defeat them.”

Although Obama said there would be a “military element” to the strategy, he added that “this is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops.”

“This is not the equivalent of the Iraq war,” he said. “What this is, is similar to the kinds of counter-terrorism campaigns that we’ve been engaging in consistently over the last five, six, seven years.”

Over the weekend, the U.S. launched more airstrikes in Iraq, the latest aimed at thwarting militants from advancing toward an important dam. The attacks were described by administration officials as within the parameters of what the president had previously said would be a limited air campaign in Iraq.

Obama has been criticized for failing to set a clear strategy on how to deal with the Islamic State, reflecting his reluctance to commit American forces to another war in Iraq. But in the wake of the militants’ attack on minority Yazidis in Iraq and the gruesome beheading of two American journalists, there have been growing calls from Congress and others for more aggressive action.

Obama’s planned speech suggests that he was preparing a new phase in U.S. military action and would be seeking to rally the American public — and Congress — behind the broader mission.

“I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat,” Obama told NBC.