Obama comes out fighting ahead of speech on tackling Islamic State

In January, United States president Barack Obama dismissed the possibility of militant Islamic fighters in Iraq striking the US, saying their capacity to attack was like a junior varsity basketball team trying to play with the professionals.

"If a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Mr Obama told the New Yorker magazine in a comment that has come back to bite him.

Since then, the rise of Sunni radical militants the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, has forced the president into outlining a new strategy to deal with this threat from this once-obscure group in a high- profile address to the nation from the White House tonight.

Mr Obama’s comment was criticised as further miscalculation in his wider foreign policy of retreat and reticence. Now he is having to suit up and set out a game plan to beat IS.

This is a critical moment for a president seen as a weak foreign policy leader. He has been hammered for admitting last month that the US "don't have a strategy yet" for dealing with IS fighters and who, after denouncing the beheading of US journalist James Foley during the president's holiday on Martha's Vineyard, headed off to play a round of golf. In just a few weeks he has come across as tone deaf to sensitivities and directionless to a growing threat.

"I should've anticipated the optics," Obama said in an interview with NBC Sunday talk show Meet the Press, of his decision to hit the golf course that day. The beheading of a second US journalist Steven Sotloff since then has compounded Obama's problems and illustrated again to the American public the threat posed by IS fighters.

Obama will have learned from those missteps and today’s statement is likely to be a clear strategy to tackle IS that he will hope will silence those critical of him for being disengaged and reluctant to deal with a succession of mounting international crises.

Fighting talk

The fighting talk began on Sunday. In the same NBC interview Obama said he would set out a plan that over the course of months would “not just blunt the momentum” of IS but that would “systematically degrade their capabilities”. “We’re going to shrink the territory that they control and ultimately we’re going to defeat them,” he said.

A poll published by the Washington Post and ABC News yesterday showed an increasingly belligerent American public willing to strike IS in line with growing congressional support for military action not only in Iraq but also in Syria.

Some 71 per cent of people polled said they supported US air strikes against Sunni insurgents in Iraq – a sharp increase since the IS threat became apparent in June – and 65 per cent backed action in Syria, while 43 per cent viewed Obama as a strong leader, the lowest level recorded since he was elected six years ago. The opposition to American troops on the ground, at 61 per cent, is not far off the strength of support for air strikes.

“He is going to have to walk a very fine line [today],” said Paul Pillar, a senior fellow at Georgetown University who worked at the CIA for 28 years.

“It is inevitably going to be a compromise between sounding forthright and determined to defeat a serious threat on the one hand but on the other hand reassuring the American public that they are not getting into a new Middle Eastern war in any kind of big way.”

To avoid using combat troops that might reignite anti-American tensions in the region, Obama will require a strong pan-Arab coalition on the ground, including the support of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. He also wants backing from Turkey as well as European powers fearful of the threat from returning home-grown Islamic fighters.

The strategy, to be outlined a day before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, has already been well telegraphed in media leaks. The first part of the game plan is in progress: the US has struck IS targets in Iraq almost 150 times in a month, pushing back the militants in northern and western Iraq to protect religious minorities and US personnel.

Training and arming The president is expected to intensify the training and arming of the Iraqi military

following the formation in Baghdad of a government more inclusive of Sunni Muslims; and to equip Kurdish fighters and other Sunni tribes to undermine IS in Iraq.

The most difficult part of the strategy will be extending the fight against IS across the border into Syria. Obama administration officials have already tried to manage expectations on this, saying it would take time, possibly well into the next presidential cycle.

Obama must play catch-up for dawdling previously over Syria, where critics, including his former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, have said he should have armed moderate rebels earlier in the country's three-year civil war to stem the rise of IS.

“He is learning one of the lessons of history in foreign policy: if you are so reluctant to use a little force early, you are doomed to use a lot of force later,” said Henry Nau, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.

Most, though, expect a measured strategy against IS, consistent with targeted strikes on al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and, more recently, al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane in Somalia, and for Obama to avoid another costly ground war, in line with his policy of retrenchment.

“This is not a guy who is afraid to take a gun to a fight but he is very careful about when he uses it,” said Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University, who anticipates no change from Obama’s position as a “reluctant warrior.”