--- title: Barack Obama Open to Military Action Against ISIS in Syria description: Days after the ISIS beheading of James Foley canonical: https://time.com/3162290/isis-iraq-syria-barack-obama/ author: Dan Hirschhorn article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-22T22:38:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:49:40.145Z article:section: Politics og:title: Barack Obama Open to Military Action Against ISIS in Syria og:description: Days after the ISIS beheading of James Foley og:url: https://time.com/3162290/isis-iraq-syria-barack-obama/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Barack Obama Open to Military Action Against ISIS in Syria twitter:description: Days after the ISIS beheading of James Foley twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # U.S. Weighs Military Action Against ISIS in Syria > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=496c69b6-ae2e-4f60-889c-aafb36fbd170&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Syria's Children: A Lost Generation? [Watch (HLS stream): Syria's Children: A Lost Generation?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/KffLpruY.m3u8) (2:56)  _Published 2013-11-29. At the end of October, 52% of the 2.2 million Syrians who had registered with UNHCR as refugees were children._ by [Dan Hirschhorn](https://time.com/author/dan-hirschhorn/) ## Dan Hirschhorn Aug 22, 2014 10:38 PM UTC by [Dan Hirschhorn](https://time.com/author/dan-hirschhorn/) ## Dan Hirschhorn Aug 22, 2014 10:38 PM UTC The U.S. is open to the possibility of military action against Islamist militants in Syria, a top Obama Administration official said Friday, warning that the U.S. will “do what is necessary to protect Americans.” “We’ve made very clear time and again that if you come after Americans, we’re going to come after you wherever you are,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters. “And that’s what’s going to guide our planning in the days to come.” President Barack Obama has resisted pressure from both outside and inside his Administration to take a more muscular approach in Syria, where a bloody civil war has claimed 191,000 lives in recent years, according to a new U.N. estimate Friday. But the emergence of the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), which released a graphic video on Tuesday depicting the beheading of American journalist James Foley, has raised the stakes — and has seemingly made American officials, already engaged in targeted military action in Iraq, more willing to consider doing so on the other side of the border. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that any strategy against ISIS would have to include action against militants in Syria, and Rhodes didn’t disagree with that assertion Friday. “Well, we certainly agree that any strategy to deal with the \[ISIS\] organization has to deal with both sides of the border, Iraq and Syria,” Rhodes said. “The strategy that we are already undertaking does address that in the sense that we are providing training and equipping and assistance to the Iraqi security forces and Kurdish security forces who are fighting them on the ground in Iraq. “We are also providing support and military assistance to the moderate Syrian opposition,” he added. “What we would like to see is those efforts squeeze the space where \[ISIS\] operates.” Rhodes cautioned that no decisions have been made. “I don’t want to get ahead of decisions the President hasn’t been presented with, specific military options outside of those carrying out the current missions in Iraq,” he said. “But we would certainly look at what is necessary in the long term to make sure we’re protecting Americans.” ## Transcript -[ Foreign Language ] >> You can hear the blasts, but these Syrian children unfazed. As some ride bikes playfully past storefronts both shuttered and scarred, others calmly describe what they've seen. Once I saw a head fly by, says one. The first time we were afraid, says another boy, now we're used to it. Then, a huge explosion nearby. -[ Foreign Language ] >> Go, go, go. >> Go, go, go. >> Go! >> They scramble to find safety. They're unharmed, at least not physically harmed. Later, one boy is asked if anyone taught him to dive to the ground the way he did. >> No, all by myself, he states proudly. Like so many other Syrian children, they learn about life and death far too soon, and all on their own. Countless futures have been destroyed, the circumstances so dire there are now well more than 1 million child refugees. It's why the U. N. is sounding the alarm, releasing a new report urging the world to act in order to save, quote, traumatized, isolated and suffering Syrian children from catastrophe. Close to 400, 000 of them now live in neighboring Lebanon, if you can call this living. Huddling in the Bekaa Valley's makeshift camps, playing inside its half- built schools, surviving wherever and however they can, the alienation and agony apparent. You see their suffering throughout the streets of the capital as well. I'm in the heart of Beirut's commercial district. In the past four blocks that I've walked, I've come across 10 Syrian children, all under the age of 7, begging alongside their mothers. Then there are the children trying to support their families. Many shine shoes, several, like 12- year- old Ali, sell tissues. He tells me his home in Idlib was destroyed, that he's been in Lebanon for all of three days; that he, his mother, and sister have no other choice. I ask if he can go to school here. How am I going to go to school? He shoots back. Later, with startling directness he says, I have to work. I have to make money. If I don't, how are we going to make it? Life doesn't get much harsher. 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