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ISIL

Boehner: U.S. may have 'no choice' on combat troops

Susan Davis
USA TODAY
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

WASHINGTON — The top Republican in the U.S. House said Sunday that the United States may ultimately have to send in troops to combat the Islamic State militant group.

"At the end of the day, I think it's gonna take more than airstrikes to drive them outta there," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, "At some point, somebody's boots have to be on the ground."

Boehner appeared Sunday on ABC's This Week.

He acknowledged that President Obama does not support sending ground troops in to fight the radical group also known as ISIS or ISIL, but Boehner said that if other nations do not step up and provide ground forces, "we have no choice."

"These are barbarians. They intend to kill us. And if we don't destroy them first, we're gonna pay the price," he said.

However, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken reiterated on CBS' Face the Nation that the president will not be sending ground troops. "Again, we're not going to repeat what we did before: hundreds of thousands of Americans on the ground in the Middle East getting bogged down. That's exactly what al-Qaeda wants. That's not what we're going to do."

In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes airing Sunday evening, Obama acknowledged the United States underestimated ISIL's strength on the ground in Iraq and Syria, and overestimated the Iraqi army's ability to defeat them. Obama explained the U.S. mission this way: "We just have to push them back, and shrink their space, and go after their command and control, and their capacity, and their weapons, and their fueling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters."

Congress does not return to Washington until Nov. 12, after the midterm elections. There is a growing bipartisan effort to vote on a resolution authorizing the president's plan to combat ISIL, although top lawmakers like Boehner maintain that the president has the legal authority to act without their consent.

"I think he does have the authority to do it," Boehner said, "But the point I'm making is this is a proposal the Congress ought to consider."

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has been a leading proponent for a new resolution authorizing the current mission. Obama "does not have the Article II constitutional authority to do this entire mission without Congress, and neither of the authorizations passed by Congress in 2001 or 2002 cover it," Kaine said Sunday, also appearing on CBS. The previous authorizations approved the war in Iraq and the effort to defeat al-Qaeda.

"The notion (that) we can go after people who perpetrated 9/11 and it's now being used to go after groups that didn't even exist when 9/11 happened suggests we've got to be very careful in how we define who we're at war with," Kaine said.

A congressional debate on any resolution could be hugely divisive between lawmakers such as Boehner who say they believe the U.S. may need to consider ground troops and lawmakers who would like to use a resolution to make clear that combat troops will not be deployed in this mission to defeat ISIL.

Any effort to send ground troops to combat ISIL could splinter the president's party. "All I can say to you is — and I've told this to my caucus and they've told it to me — (House Democrats) are not there to support combat troops in any of these engagements," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters earlier this month.

Kaine acknowledged that while he does not believe the president has the legal authority to act alone, there is not a groundswell of support in Congress to have this debate. Lawmakers adjourned unusually early, Sept. 18, for the homestretch of the midterm elections.

"To the extent that there's some culpability here, it probably is more on Congress' shoulders," he said.

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