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 The renewed threat posed by Islamic militants is emerging as the
top foreign policy issue for the 2016 race, and Obama's submission
to Congress on Wednesday of a draft authorization of military force
against the extremists intensified the debate.
With foreign fighters flocking to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic
State, known as ISIS or ISIL, the issue has landed in the laps of
the dozen or so Republicans who are seriously considering a run for
their party's presidential nomination.
Many of them are current or former state governors who are just now
boning up on foreign policy.
So far they are describing what they see as gaps in Obama's
strategy, which has relied heavily on air strikes, saying he needs
to be more aggressive in challenging "radical Islam."
"With regard to ISIS, we have not seen a seriousness of purpose. We
have seen instead photo-op foreign policy: a bomb here, a missile
there," Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz told the Center for
Security Policy, a conservative think tank.
 But no one has offered a detailed blueprint on how they would take
on Islamic State, which over the past year has seized a swathe of
Iraq and Syria and overtaken al Qaeda as a magnet for Islamic
extremists.
With Americans long since weary of U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, Republican candidates-in-waiting have to tread
carefully.
WAR-WEARY BUT WORRIED
Ideas run from bolstering Iraqi Kurds who have been fighting Islamic
State militants, to persuading Arab nations to drop their resistance
to putting more troops on the front lines, to sending in more U.S.
troops.
"What the president needs to come up with is a strategy, militarily,
to defeat them, which I think involves, for example, an anti-ISIL
ground force made up of Arab armies, combined with U.S. Special
Forces," Florida Senator Marco Rubio told Fox News.
He added that air strikes should also be ramped up to provide
tactical support.
After a series of videotaped beheadings of U.S. citizens by Islamic
State, Americans' concern over the threat posed by the group and
other militants has risen.
A mid-January poll by the Pew Research Center found that for the
first time in five years, defending the United States from terrorism
was the top issue for Americans, with 76 percent citing it as the
main policy challenge.
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This makes it fertile ground for the 2016 presidential campaign for
both Republicans and Democrats.
Only Cruz and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker have raised the
possibility of eventually sending U.S. ground troops to the region,
however. Others speak far more vaguely, saying the United States
needs to be more aggressive.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said Obama's draft resolution
- which bars any large-scale invasion by U.S. ground troops and
covers the next three years - is short-sighted for an effort that
will require a "sustained military effort."
"The president's limitations of a three year commitment and against
'enduring offensive ground combat operations' place
counterproductive restraints on our national power, and the
military's ability to accomplish the mission," he said.
The issue of Islamic State is particularly tricky for potential
Republican candidate Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor whose
brother, President George W. Bush, started wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Obama's draft authorization of military force would repeal and
replace the 2002 Iraq war resolution crafted by Bush.
In Detroit last week Jeb Bush criticized Obama's handling of the
threat, calling it a result of a U.S. pullback from the region. But
he was careful to say U.S. troops should not be deployed every time
there is a global challenge, a position that could be intended to
put some space between him and his brother's Iraq war.
"We have to be engaged. And that doesn't necessarily mean boots on
the ground in every occurrence," Bush said.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Stuart Grudgings)
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