Obama’s anti-IS proposal does not include “large-scale ground combat”

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday sent to Congress a draft resolution to authorize the use of force against the Islamic State, a text that he hopes will serve as the legal basis for the current offensive against the jihadists but which, he said, will not allow “longterm largescale ground combat operations.”

In a White House statement after submitting the draft resolution to Congress, the president said that it “does not call for the deployment of U.S. ground combat forces to Iraq or Syria.”

Obama delivered a statement discussing the resolution in the Roosevelt Room accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

“I’m convinced that the United States should not get dragged back into another prolonged ground war in the Middle East. That’s not in our national security interest and it’s not necessary for us to defeat ISIL,” the president said.

He also said that his proposal is in line with the international coalition’s strategy of pursuing a “systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria,” an effort in which local forces, including the moderate Syrian opposition, are conducting ground operations against the jihadists.

The president acknowledged that degrading and ultimately destroying the IS “is a difficult mission, and it will remain difficult for some time,” but he said that the international coalition is “on the offensive,” while the terrorists are “on the defensive.”

More than 2,000 airstrikes have been conducted by the international coalition since its campaign against the IS was launched, Obama said, adding that the jihadists are “going to lose.”

The president also said that his resolution “strikes the necessary balance by giving us the flexibility we need for unforeseen circumstances,” including rescue operations or quickreaction Special Forces operations targeting the terrorists.

The draft sent by Obama to Congress sets no clear time limits on the U.S.led allied campaign against the IS, but neither does it authorize largescale ground combat operations “like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the president said.

So far, the Obama administration has based its airstrikes against the IS in Iraq and Syria on an “authorization for the use of military force,” or an AUMF, dating from 2001 and on another measure from 2002 for Iraq that thenPresident George W. Bush used to launch attacks against terrorists abroad.

Nevertheless, Obama said in November that he would prefer for Congress to approve a specific legal basis for the offensive against the IS begun last August, and over the past three months the White House has maintained contacts with legislators to prepare a draft proposal on that matter.

In the proposal sent to Congress, Obama says that “local forces” in the countries where the IS is being fought “should be deployed to conduct” ground combat operations, “rather than U.S. military forces,” as has been occurring in Iraq and Syria.

His proposal “would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes, or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces,” he added.

The draft sent by Obama contains no details about possible time limits for the campaign or to its possible geographic extension beyond Iraq and Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in December that the administration’s position was that authorization to fight the IS should not include any geographic limitation, given the group’s possible expansion of its activities to other locations.