Subscribe 

Fragile consensus for Obama’s ISIL military campaign

As President Obama on Tuesday announced the first airstrikes against Islamic State of Syria and Levant (ISIL) targets in Syria — an opening salvo in what promises to be a lengthy intervention — there seemed to be a near-miracle afoot at home: some measure of consensus. The latest public opinion polls shows broad support for […]

Naureen Khan writes for Al Jazeera:

As President Obama on Tuesday announced the first airstrikes against Islamic State of Syria and Levant (ISIL) targets in Syria — an opening salvo in what promises to be a lengthy intervention — there seemed to be a near-miracle afoot at home: some measure of consensus. The latest public opinion polls shows broad support for the president’s military campaign — 71 percent of respondents in a September ABC News/Washington Post survey said they support strikes against the Sunni insurgency in Iraq while 65 percent said they supported expanding the strikes into Syria. A whopping 91 percent of those polled said they viewed ISIL as a threat to the “vital interests of the United States.”

In Congress, too, there has been relatively little rancor. Although some Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans have expressed reservations about wandering into another open-ended conflict in the Middle East, while other members of the GOP have grumbled that the president should have stepped into the fray months, if not years, ago, the majority of lawmakers have given the president leeway on his strategy.