Administration Ratchets Up Rhetoric, While Ratcheting Up War on ISIS

Officials Vow to Destroy ISIS 'Wherever They Exist'

As the administration continues to expand the scope of the ISIS war far beyond its initial presentation to the American public, the administration’s leadership is also picking up their hysterical rhetoric, trying to justify the conflict.

President Obama has continued to promise to destroy ISIS “wherever they exist,” while he and Secretary of State John Kerry continue to present the group as a massive threat to the whole world, and one with no ideology of their own, but simply vision-less, irredeemable evil whose sole purpose is to be the latest dragon for the US to go forth and slay.

The rhetoric of the threat is also being matched by the claims about the largely fictional global coalition that the US is supposedly leading in this huge new conflict.

Promises that the US won’t get dragged into a ground war in Iraq seem to be getting dialed back a bit by President Obama, who in tonight’s speech insisted only that the US troops couldn’t be in direct combat, while Kerry conceded that US troops might be committed to a ground war in “extreme circumstances.

That’s a telling bit of rhetoric, as the administration has been working tirelessly to convince the public that extreme circumstances already exist in Iraq, and they continue to send more troops, a few hundred at a time, building up the eventual ground force for this war.

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.