Republicans assail Obama on ISIS—despite similarities

President Barack Obama addresses the nation from the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Sunday night, Dec. 6, 2016. The president’s speech followed Wednesday’s shooting in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 people and wounded 21. AP

WASHINGTON — Minutes after a solemn President Barack Obama spelled out his plans to protect Americans from terrorism, Marco Rubio declared that he “may have made things worse.” Jeb Bush called the president “weak” and his approach “business as usual.” And Donald Trump declared on Twitter, “We need a new President – FAST!”

Yet beneath their harsh rhetoric lies a fundamental political reality: Few in the Republican Party’s 2016 class would break significantly with the Democratic president’s approach to combating the Islamic State group. The avalanche of Republican criticism that continued Monday focused on the president’s tone, his word choice and the fine points of his plans — not in most cases the specific policy prescriptions he presented in his address from the Oval Office Sunday night.

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Bush, in an MSNBC interview, twice acknowledged that he agreed with the president’s approach in specific areas. Still, he chided Obama’s planning for lacking “the intensity that’s necessary.”

“He needed to persuade people that our fears will subside when we’re engaged actively in the destruction of ISIS, and from there you would have a strategy that would be much more comprehensive,” said Bush. He then outlined a plan to strengthen the existing US effort to train local forces and engage Sunni tribal leaders.

Like Obama, most of the Republicans’ White House hopefuls oppose the use of many US ground troops, preferring instead to send a limited number of special forces to train and support anti-Islamic State forces in the region. Like Obama, they support an aggressive air campaign to bomb the Islamic State group — and its reliance on oil revenue — across Iraq and Syria.

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There are specific differences in some cases — most notably on the Republicans’ support (shared by Democratic contender Hillary Clinton) for a no-fly zone in Syria. But on a broader US approach to taking on ISIS in the Middle East, leading Republicans have more in common than not with the president they hope to replace.

Rubio, when asked how he’d differ from Obama, focused on style rather than substance: “First, we would be straight forward and honest with the American people,” the first-term Florida senator said on Fox News. “ISIS is a growing, significant and very serious threat. They’re not contained.”

Rubio opposes a significant increase in US ground troops, instead calling for “a substantial ground army that needs to be made up primarily of Sunni Arabs from the region.” He says that force would “need American special operators, a significant increase in air support, and we will have to beef up our intelligence programs.”

Bush called last month for sending US troops to the Middle East but was not specific on numbers and said, “The bulk of these ground troops will need to come from local forces that we have built workable relationships with.”

The Obama administration last week announced plans to expand the US special operations force in Iraq and Syria to help fight Islamic State militants. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the expeditionary force would be more than 50 but would not be more specific. Other US officials said the number would be about 100.

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There currently are about 3,500 US troops in Iraq, and Obama had previously announced he was sending fewer than 50 special operations forces to Syria.