Obama, the reluctant warrior, back by popular demand

It did not look much like a declaration of war, and maybe it wasn’t really. But it was enough, in the words of the New York Times, to put America back onto "a war footing".

The television screens of America cut from sitcoms, sport and 24-hour cable news froth to a long, windowless corridor in the White House known as the State Floor.

President Obama, all alone, strode the few steps to the podium, one hand on his jacket button, the trousers of his loose-fitting suit flapping around his legs. His mouth was pursed. His eyes were tired, as they always seem to be these days, moving as if from face to face, but without much focus and never a glare.

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He had used the same spot, considered more “neutral” by spinners and media gurus than the Oval Office or FDR’s old West Wing fireside, to tell the world a year ago that he would not be invading Syria and earlier, much more happily, that he had killed Osama bin Laden.

Now he would “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State terrorists in the latest episode of the war on terror. And, for the first time, American planes would target IS – or Isil as Obama prefers to call the Sunni jihadist organisation - in Syria.

“We will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists,” he said. “I will not hesitate to take action against Isil in Syria, as well as Iraq."

• What the President said in last night's address

David Brooks, a veteran columnist on the New York Times, had labelled Obama “the reluctant warrior” before he uttered a word and that held up as the most appropriate description of the man on the night.

Obama had his serious look on as he informed the nation that “my highest priority is the safety of the American people”. Perhaps it is because he has had to say that so often in the six years since he came to office promising peace and sanity and prosperity that these days he makes it sound as routine as a campaign pledge.We no longer expect Churchillian oratory. There are moments when it is not so hard to understand why Americans responded, however unwisely, to the cowboy bravado of George ‘Dubya’ Bush and his talk of “shock and awe”.

On the eve of the 13th anniversary of the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, Obama did not promise shock and awe.

But he did call the jihadists of IS “evil”, a word which the commentators very quickly pointed out was a favourite in the Bush lexicon. It was, he added, "a terrorist organisation, pure and simple".

It is actually important for Obama to stress this, however obvious, for domestic political reasons to do with deadlocked Washington politics. He has the authority to join battle with terrorist forces wherever they are, without having to deal with the implacable Obama-haters of Congress.

But he was talking to the nation, not to Congress, so he added that the “core principle of my presidency is that if you threaten America, you have no place to hide”.

America has made it loud and clear that he should go get the killers who slashed off the heads of two American journalists. Those videos did what the tens of thousands of dead in Syria and Iraq, and in Palestine too, could not. Opinion polls swung to 70 per cent in favour of action against IS, whatever the fearful intricacies of the Middle East meltdown.

In short, it was public opinion that had summoned Obama to the podium.

He has been ridiculed for his recent weary pronouncements that “the world has always been messy” and that he had not yet devised a strategy for dealing with IS, saying instead that the goal was to “not do stupid stuff”.

So Obama announced a strategy: another 475 non-combat military personnel to go to Iraq offering training, support and equipment, although America “will not get dragged into another ground war” because its “partners” will be putting the boots on the ground; he has authorised aid to moderate anti-Assad rebels in Syria; he will prevent IS attacks on America with an improved intelligence effort, and will be chairing a United Nations meeting to bolster the “broad coalition of nations” he has rallied to the cause; and he will increase humanitarian assistance to Muslim victims of the terrorists as well as “tens of thousands of Christians”.

Nearly all of this had been broadcast earlier in the day, so the pundits were ready for him. They wanted to know how he planned to succeed without “boots on the ground”, and what was Plan B should airstrikes and reliance on Syrian rebels and the Iraqi army indeed prove inadequate.

The New York Times challenged the fudge between war and not war in an editorial, pointing out that the President had “moved the nation back onto a war footing” and that "there will be no turning back once air strikes enter Syrian territory, unleashing events that simply cannot be foreseen".

On CNN, Newt Gingrich, former House leader and Bill Clinton’s nemesis, said it would be “better to be direct” and that the promise not to put boots on the ground was “baloney”.In a sense, all this is detail. The key question last night was whether President Obama could show the nation and the world that he still has the will or the clout or even the charisma to lead.

David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker magazine, sees Obama as deeply world-weary but essentially right with his “don’t do stupid stuff” priority. It is “not a mantra to be derided or dismissed”.

Maybe we could argue that last night Obama pulled off a convincing performance of cool and rational leadership, reassuring Americans that they are doing just fine in a chaotic and dangerous world and that 'Jihadi John' would soon meet the same fate as Osama bin Laden.But really he came over, once again, as the reluctant warrior who would much prefer to be talking about something else altogether.