As the atrocities committed by the Islamic State continue to mount, Americans no longer appear to be so weary of war. They are, in fact, more prepared to return to the battlefront than lawmakers on Capitol Hill,
The Washington Post reports.
After a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, millions of Americans had grown tired of having their boys going off to fight overseas — or "war-weary" as the term has been coined.
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But that has all changed in the past year, as the terror group has gone on a rampage across vast swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, while raping and enslaving women, executing captured soldiers and killing innocent civilians because of their faith.
The Islamic militants have also carried out sickening beheadings of foreign hostages, including Americans, and burned a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage, videotaped for the world to see.
Now a new
CBS News poll shows that 57 percent of Americans support sending ground troops to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) extremists, which is a 10 percent increase over last October.
And a
Fox News poll revealed that 60 percent of Americans said that ground troops were needed to crush ISIS, rather than airstrikes alone, and urged the Obama administration to approve such action now.
A
CNN/ORC poll this week found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the way President Barack Obama has been handling the threat posed by ISIS, while an overwhelming 78 percent supported authorizing the use of military force against the militant group.
In the Post's political column "The Fix," Aaron Blake says that despite these recent polls, there's "very little push in Congress or the Obama administration for a significant ground troop presence" to counter ISIS in the Mideast.
Blake noted that Obama's request for authorization of force includes limited ground troops for rescue missions and intelligence-gathering, but not as part of "enduring offensive ground operations."
He also said that although Republicans want "more leeway" in the use of ground troops, they are reluctant to push for ground troops to be sent into battle against ISIS right now.
"Which is where the lingering effects of Iraq and Afghanistan come in. Even as there is a growing desire for ground troop presence to fight the Islamic State, actually sending them in is a very difficult political decision," Blake writes.
"Once you commit to putting Americans on the ground, you own the results — as the Democrats who voted for the Iraq war and Republicans who lost the 2008 presidential election will attest.
"Which is why, even as the American public is starting to build a consensus on fighting the Islamic State on the ground, Congress and the Obama administration will continue to be more cautious. Indeed, it seems they are now more war-weary than the American people."
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