Obama Says U.S. Role in Iraq Not ‘America Against ISIL’.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-28/obama-says-u-s-role-in-iraq-not-america-against-isil-.html

President Barack Obama said U.S. airstrikes in Iraq are an example of the country leading a coalition to aid an ally, not a direct confrontation with Islamic State militants.

“This is not America against ISIL,” Obama, using the administration’s shorthand for Islamic State, said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired yesterday. “This is America leading the international community to assist a country with whom we have a security partnership with, to make sure that they are able to take care of their business.”

The interview was conducted after Obama returned to the White House from the United Nations General Assembly, where he pressed for more nations to fight Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, won a Security Council resolution calling for a crackdown on the flow of foreign fighters, and laid out a U.S. strategy to counter Muslim extremists with force.

“America leads,” Obama said in the interview. “We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us.”

Obama’s remarks reflect political cross-currents at home, where polls show increased support for U.S. airstrikes to quell the rise of Islamic militants, even as members of his Democratic Party remain wary of long-term military engagements. Obama sought, as he has throughout the last month, to contrast his strategy with the ground wars pursued by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Syria Strikes

The Sept. 26 interview was the first given by Obama since U.S. aircraft and missiles struck targets in Syria in a joint operation with five Arab states.

“Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned,” the president said, Islamic State was “able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos.”

The initial Syria air attacks targeted Islamic State and areas purported to be aligned with the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaeda affiliate that U.S. officials described as plotting terrorist attacks in the U.S. and Europe. U.S. targets in the ongoing strikes have included oil refineries, an effort to cut off the group’s financing.

Oil Refineries

In the latest strikes, conducted Sept. 27 and 28, aircraft from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates destroyed a tank, armed vehicles, a Humvee, and struck a command-and-control center and four modular oil refineries in Syria owned or controlled by Islamic State forces, according to a statement issued by U.S. Central Command.

Obama said U.S. intelligence officials failed to appreciate the gains made by Islamic State extremists in Syria during the last few years of that country’s civil war.

General Assembly

In his Sept. 24 speech to the UN General Assembly, Obama said the brutal ideology of terrorist groups such as Islamic State must be eliminated.

Obama later led the UN Security Council in its 15-0 vote for a resolution aimed at information sharing and cracking down on the flow of foreign fighters who go into conflict zones and then back to their home countries.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet flies over the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush after conducting strike missions against ISIL targets on Sept. 23, 2014. 

A Syrian man inspects the rubble of a destroyed building following U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in northern Syria, on Sept. 25, 2014.