Bad news keeps piling up at the White House’s doorstep on the pressing matter of the Islamic State. Obama’s persistent inability to tie the word “Islamic” to anything connected to terrorism, even when vile acts are committed by murderers boasting of their hardline Islamic beliefs, has not calmed the American public. Comments this week by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf that, when it comes to the Islamic State, “we cannot win this war by killing them,” and that more employment opportunities are what’s really needed to blunt Islamic extremism, have been laughed off by many Americans, and deservedly so.
It’s no surprise that the public’s confidence in Obama’s war against the Islamic State, called ISIS by many in the West, for Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (i.e. the Levant), is waning. A new CNN poll shows a sharp drop, with 57 percent of Americans disapproving of how the president is handling the ISIS threat, a fall of eight points since September. Now, more than six months after Obama authorized U.S. Central Command to bomb ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the president has asked Congress to sign off. Since it took the administration over two months to even find a name for this war—it’s Operation Inherent Resolve, in case you wondered—it’s not surprising that the White House has dragged its feet with Congress, too.
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