The White House is facing growing calls to strike back swiftly at Islamic State jihadists inside Syria after the murder of a second American journalist.
One Democratic senator has promised to introduce a bill in Congress next week giving the president clear and unambiguous authority to use airstrikes inside Syria against Islamic State.
Bill Nelson, a senator for the murdered journalist Steven Sotloff’s home state of Florida, said: “We must go after Isis right away because the US is the only one that can put together a coalition to stop this group that’s intent on barbaric cruelty.”
Public opinion is shifting again in war-weary America, with polls suggesting more than half now believe that Mr Obama is not tough enough on national security and now support airstrikes against Islamic State.
Marco Rubio, one of the Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls, urged Mr Obama to “act now” to attack the jihadists’ leadership.
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Mr Rubio, who is seen as the most hawkish of the crowded Republican field, sharply criticised President Obama for holding back, insisting that the “horrifying clarity” of the Isis message towards America “should have been met from the beginning with an equally clear opposing message”.
Mr Rubio said: “There is no disease that becomes easier to treat the longer you wait, and as history has shown time and again, it is the same with malignant forces in global affairs.”
He added: “If we do not act now to assist our Iraqi partners and moderate Syrians who oppose [Isis], as well as utilise our own forces to directly target [its] leadership, the result will be more suffering and tragedy for our people.”
It is already clear that America’s posture on foreign policy is going to play a bigger role in the US presidential debate than in the campaign of 2012, which was dominated by the economy.
Mr Rubio, who has spent the past year positioning himself as the leading foreign policy specialist in the Republican field, accuses Mr Obama of projecting weakness on the world stage and underestimating the jihadists of Islamic State. However, there are shades of opinion in the Republican ranks — Rand Paul, a frontrunner in the most recent polls, has condemned US Middle East policy as “unhinged” and “flailing”. He has warned of the risks of too much intervention, claiming that Hillary Clinton had been ready to adopt a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy by arming rebels in Syria.
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“We are lucky Mrs Clinton didn’t get her way and the Obama administration did not bring about regime change in Syria. That new regime may well be Isis,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Mr Paul argues “America cannot police or solve every problem across the globe”, a line taken straight from many of Mr Obama’s own speeches.