The Islamic State’s latest brutal murder of a Westerner — the fifth in three months — has added new fuel to the debate over President Obama’s strategy for dealing with the powerful terrorist group.
High-profile Republicans said Sunday the White House is wrong to publicly rule out the use of ground troops to fight the organization in Iraq and Syria, a step the president and most Democrats have dismissed.
But the most recent actions by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have again brought the group’s tactics into focus, and surely will raise new questions about whether the U.S. and its allies are doing enough to degrade and destroy the group, as Mr. Obama has vowed to do.
On Sunday, the Islamic State released another graphic video purporting to show the beheading of American aid worker Peter Kassig, 26, who was captured in Syria last year. The footage also shows the killing of a dozen men identified as members of the Syrian military, which is locked in its own struggle with the Islamist organization.
President Obama released a statement Sunday afternoon confirming the death of Mr. Kassig and referred to him as Abdul-Rahman Kassig. The late aid worker reportedly converted to Islam while in captivity and took a new name.
“Abdul-Rahman was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity. Like Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff before him, his life and deeds stand in stark contrast to everything that ISIL represents,” the president said, referencing two American journalists killed by the Islamic State on-camera.
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“ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith, which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own. Today we grieve together, yet we also recall that the indomitable spirit of goodness and perseverance that burned so brightly in Abdul-Rahman Kassig, and which binds humanity together, ultimately is the light that will prevail over the darkness of ISIL,” the president said.
The Kassig family also released a statement saying they want their son to be remembered “for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family.”
The U.S. and its partners continue bombing campaigns against the group in both Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon also is sending more American troops to the theater to help train Iraqi armed forces battling the Islamic State on the ground.
While that strategy has resulted in some key victories, it’s apparent from Sunday’s video the group still is able to abduct and murder Westerners and still controls sizable chunks of territory.
Virtually everyone agrees that sending U.S. ground forces to the region should be avoided, but some Republicans say Mr. Obama should not have ruled out that option and told the enemy what lines America will not cross.
“No one wants to call it on the table, I don’t think. I just don’t think you take things off the table,” said 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney when asked about ground troops while appearing on the CBS “Face the Nation” program on Sunday.
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“When the president says, for instance, that ISIS is a cancer and it must be eliminated, he’s right. But you don’t say, ’Well, we’re only going to use the following tools in doing so,’” Mr. Romney continued. “You say we’re going to do whatever it takes, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that with other people’s troops. But if it takes our own troops, you don’t take that [away] as a source of our strength from the battlefield.”
Sunday’s video, while somewhat similar to previous releases from the Islamic State, does not show Mr. Kassig’s beheading or the immediately preceding moments, though it does show his severed head. The video does show, in more graphic terms, the killings of the men identified as Syrian military.
Also unlike past videos, where an Islamic State militant with a clear British accent can be heard, the fighter’s voice is distorted in the latest footage. The footage also shows other still-alive captives held by the group, as previous videos have done.
It does, however, include a stark warning to the U.S.
“We say to you, Obama … you claim to have withdrawn from Iraq four years ago,” the militant said. “Here you are; you have not withdrawn. … Here we are, burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly awaiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive.”
The Islamic State fighter claims the video was shot in the Syrian town of Dabiq.
There are many lawmakers who support the president’s approach of airstrikes, training and logistical support while relying on Iraqi security forces and moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State on the ground.
“The notion of sending in rotational troops, as we saw in Iraq in the past and in Afghanistan, I think we’ve learned our lesson,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“The president has the right course here. He is gathering a coalition of Arab and Muslim states and others who are going to try to help to defeat ISIS, but it has to be homegrown, regionally supported, diverse enough so that it’s not just a United States operation but an international operation,” he said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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