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'You can't sit idle': Across region, support for hitting ISIS

Secretary of State John Kerry says no one should use the word war to describe President Obama's intention to launch airstrikes inside Syria and expand the bombing in Iraq.

pWAR12.  Photo by Barbara Boyer
Krystyna Wittmann, owner of Sebastian's Schnitzel Haus in Wrightsville, with Air Force veteran Mohammed Didin of Pemberton. Wittmann displays an honorary recognition she received from a commander at Joint Base McGuire-Dix in Burlington County.
pWAR12. Photo by Barbara Boyer Krystyna Wittmann, owner of Sebastian's Schnitzel Haus in Wrightsville, with Air Force veteran Mohammed Didin of Pemberton. Wittmann displays an honorary recognition she received from a commander at Joint Base McGuire-Dix in Burlington County.Read more

Secretary of State John Kerry says no one should use the word war to describe President Obama's intention to launch airstrikes inside Syria and expand the bombing in Iraq.

Military scholar Dominic Tierney says definitions get tricky, "but as we escalate the operation, it gets closer and closer to a reasonable explanation of war."

And people across the Philadelphia region say that whether it's called war, counterterrorism, or something else, they want to see the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, hit hard.

"These people are never going to stop," said Navy veteran Robert Kent, 53, a Norristown machinist. "I say, hammer these people like you never have."

In Burlington County, near Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, the owner of Sebastian's Schnitzel Haus restaurant said she worried that U.S. ground troops eventually would be introduced to fight terrorists.

"I'm sorry for the military families," said Krystyna Wittmann, 52. "They are fighting to protect us. But the people they are fighting are crazy."

Nearby, Mohammed Didin, 73, wore a camouflage hat with the emblem of a C-130 Hercules aircraft. The retired Air Force master sergeant said he supported Obama's decision.

"Either you fight them there or you fight them here. I'd rather fight them there," said Didin, a veteran of 31 years on active and reserve duty.

Outside the restaurant, Matthew Haines, 44, a former cabinetmaker who lives in Mount Holly, shared the sentiment: "I would wipe the whole place out. I know there are a lot of good people there, so I feel bad saying that. But that's the only way to stop it."

On Wednesday, Obama pledged that a U.S.-led coalition would destroy the extremists "wherever they exist" as he expanded the U.S. role in the conflict.

"Our objective is clear," he said. "We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy."

But the thing about war - whatever name it takes - is its unpredictability.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged he would not "send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." Four years later, the United States had nearly 540,000 troops in South Vietnam.

"War has its own dynamic, and can evolve in ways that even presidents can't control," said Tierney, an associate professor of political science at Swarthmore College and the author of How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War. "The question I would have is: What is the endgame in this military operation? . . . What is the strategic vision that would represent success?"

Clearly, the United States is stepping into a war zone.

But "I don't think it means we'll be going to war," said Terry Williamson, 68, who fought in Vietnam and now leads Three Diamonds Communications in Glenside. "I'm not sure there is a will among the American people to commit larger numbers of troops in that part of the world again."

In 1968 and 1969, then-Lt. Williamson led a Marine infantry platoon against main-force North Vietnamese, south of Da Nang in a free-fire zone the Americans called Dodge City. Both sides sustained heavy casualties.

Today, he heads the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which oversees the monument at Penn's Landing. Combat experience left him a too-close appreciation of the costs of war.

Williamson sees a public fatigued by long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though the burden fell on an all-volunteer military whose troops served tour after tour.

On Wednesday, Obama also renewed his request to Congress to arm and train moderate Syrian rebel forces to counter ISIS extremists. The campaign in Syria and the wider strikes in Iraq would dramatically broaden what had been a limited U.S. mission to protect refugees threatened in Iraq.

Obama said he was ordering 475 American troops to bolster nearly 1,000 now advising the Iraqis. He stressed he would not send combat troops, instead using air power to help on-the-ground fighting by others.

At the Montgomery County-Norristown Public Library, electrician William Taylor thought the speech was a start. He wondered if GIs might eventually land. No one wants that, he said, "but you can't sit idle and let things get out of hand, either."

The anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks should be a reminder, he said: "We put our guard down before."

Elester Moore, 57, a Norristown construction worker, said it was about time Obama got tough, following the beheading of two journalists. "You have to be more aggressive in protecting American citizens," he said.

The region's voices echo what polls show. A Sept. 3-7 NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found 61 percent of U.S. voters believe military action against ISIS is in the nation's interest - nearly triple the support shown last year in a similar poll.

At the Coatesville Area Public Library, retired Navy officer James Steigerwald, 63, said he, too, favored wider action.

"I think it's about time," said the Downingtown man, who volunteers at the Coatesville VA Medical Center. "Something has to stop these people."