Obama promises sustained effort to rout militants

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama has authorized a major expansion of the military campaign against rampaging Sunni militants in the Middle East, including U.S. airstrikes in Syria and the deployment of 475 more military advisors to Iraq. But he sought to dispel fears that the United States was embarking on a repeat of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a speech to the nation from the State Floor of the White House on Wednesday, Obama said the United States was recruiting a global coalition to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the militants, known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He warned that “eradicating a cancer” like the Islamic State was a long-term challenge that would put some U.S. troops at risk.

“We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are,” Obama declared in a 14-minute address. “That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq,” he added, using an alternative name for the Islamic State. “This is a core principle of my presidency:

If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.”

The president drew a distinction between the military action he was putting in motion and the two wars begun by his predecessor, President George W. Bush. He likened this campaign to the selective airstrikes that the United States has carried out for years against suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, few of which have been made public.

After enduring harsh criticism for saying two weeks ago that he did not have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State in Syria, Obama outlined a plan that will bolster U.S. training and arming of moderate Syrian rebels to fight the militants. Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide bases for the training of those forces.

Obama called on Congress to authorize the plan to train and equip rebels — something the CIA has been doing covertly and on a much smaller scale — but he asserted his authority as commander-in-chief to expand the overall campaign, which will bring the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to 1,600.

“These American forces will not have a combat mission; we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq,” Obama pledged, adding that the mission “will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; it will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”

For all Obama’s efforts to reassure the public, his remarks were a stark acknowledgement of the threat posed by the militants, whose lightning advance through Iraq and Syria and videotaped beheading of two young Americans have reignited fears of radical Islamic terrorism.

There is no evidence that the Islamic State is plotting an attack on the United States, Obama said. But he added, “If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat” to Americans, because of foreign fighters, including some from the United States, who have traveled to Syria and Iraq and could return home to carry out attacks.

Standing just outside the Blue Room, steps from where he announced the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Obama delivered a message that seemed worlds away from his confident assertions that the United States had decimated al Qaeda. The United States, he said, was locked in a long battle with a successor to al Qaeda, “unique in their brutality.”

The president’s remarks, on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will thrust the United States into a civil war in Syria that he had long sought to avoid, and will return a significant U.S. military presence to Iraq, not quite three years after the last American troops withdrew.

Unlike Bush in the Iraq War, Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners. Earlier on Wednesday, he called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to enlist his support for the plan to step up training of the Syrian rebels.

Obama is acting as polls show rapidly shifting public opinion, with a large majority of Americans now favoring military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even as they express deep misgivings about the president’s leadership.

Obama is also facing difficult crosscurrents on Capitol Hill, where Republican lawmakers, initially reluctant to demand congressional authorization of military action, have begun agitating for a vote, even as some Democrats warn of a stampede to war.