House Leader: Congress Could Force War on ISIS to Escalate

Rep. McCarthy: If Obama Won't Escalate, We Will

Hawkishness toward ISIS has become fashionable these days among US politicians, and even the ever-escalating war against ISIS in Iraq, and talks of expanding it into Syria, aren’t nearly enough for many Congressmen’s tastes.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R – CA), the House Majority Leader, pushed for a bigger war, and sooner, insisting in a new interview that “if the president won’t act, I think we have to take some action to move forward.”

Four different House committees are expected to hold hearings next week on ISIS, and Rep. McCarthy insisted that they needed to come up with a “concise foreign policy doctrine” for the war.

Congress may try to authorize expansions of the ISIS conflict as a way to try to escalate the war faster than the administration planned, but on the surface, it doesn’t appear that there is any way to “force” the president to escalate the war with such resolutions.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.