The White House is nearly ready to send to Congress a piece of legislation that would formally authorize the use of military force against ISIS. This new legislation would expand on provisions provided in the 2002 authorization for military action in Iraq, which only covers portions of the current mission.
Via CBS News:
The State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council and the White House Office of Legal Counsel have all participated in the drafting of the document, which outlines the military goals and strategy against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and would seek formal, legal authorization for the mission and other counter-terrorism operations related to the effort.This would be the first move by Congress and the White House to give legal backing to the military effort to degrade and destroy ISIS and represent the first update to US military strategy in a post-9/11 world since the authorization to use military force in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
This major move comes at a time when many analysts are seeing a change in how coalition forces are responding to the threat ISIS poses both in the Middle East, and across the world. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill believes that the “tide is turning” against ISIS.
At around 2:35, Shepard Smith mentions that Americans’ main concern is that ISIS is “coming to get us.” I don’t think this is necessarily true; at least, not anymore.
What we’ve seen over the past few weeks wasn’t a “collective freakout.” Jordan’s 56 airstrikes certainly don’t amount to such. The collective freakout happened after the first beheading; most people don’t follow foreign policy, which means that most people had never seen anything like the propaganda videos that ISIS distributed.
But now, I think people understand a little more about who ISIS is, and what their goals are. They know propaganda when they see it—even if it still scares them. But that’s almost irrelevant because if there is a “collective freakout” happening that I’m just not seeing, it doesn’t seem to have forced the governments of Jordan, or the U.S., or the European Union into anything rash.
The new war authorization isn’t ready yet; but when it’s finally released, I think we’ll be able to tell (at least to the extend that the legislation is available for perusal) whether or not the initial panic over the barbarism troops have encountered in Iraq and Syria has affected those tasked with ridding the world of ISIS.
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