ISIS And Americans Agree On Something: War

For the first time, a majority of Americans are gunning to send U.S. combat troops into Syria and Iraq to battle the Islamic State. The terror group wants exactly the same thing, according to the president and a number of foreign policy experts.

Fifty-three percent of Americans now support deploying boots on the ground against ISIS, according to a CNN/OCR poll released Sunday night. That’s a 15-point increase since the survey began back in September 2014. The survey, which was completed just one day before an alleged ISIS-inspired rampage killed 14 in San Bernardino last week, reflects growing frustration with the Obama administration’s handling of terrorism. It is also consistent with several other polls that have seen upticks of support for U.S. combat troops since the Paris terror attacks last month, for which ISIS also claimed credit.

Obama continues to defend his administration’s military strategy for defeating ISIS, which includes a mix of airstrikes, munition drops and a limited number of American special forces in Syria and Iraq, in place of conventional ground troops. During his speech from the Oval Office on Sunday night, he said that a prolonged ground war against the terror group would play right into its hands.

Sending a sizable number of U.S. troops into Syria and Iraq may also fulfill ISIS’ own ideological narrative, which believes an epic battle against the west will bring about the end of the world.

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“ISIL has a concrete apocalyptic and prophetical vision and they might welcome an American intervention in that sort of manner,” said David Weinberg, a Middle East scholar with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

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