Obama heads back to capital after vacation

WASHINGTON – The “vacation” is over and it’s back to the White House for President Barack Obama.

Obama, who returned to Washington late Sunday after two weeks on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, will have to decide whether the recent beheading of an American by Islamic State militants is reason enough to take a step he has long resisted taking.

Obama has avoided intervening militarily in Syria for three years despite the rising death toll in the country’s civil war, the government’s use of chemical weapons against civilians and the rise of the Islamic State group amid the chaos there.

The president’s own military leaders and some of his critics in Congress are pressuring him to go into Syria in an effort to defeat the group.

White House officials have suggested that military airstrikes in Syria are an option, though the officials say specific military proposals have yet to be presented to the president.

Obama’s attempt at rest and relaxation was largely overtaken by events involving Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, including the videotaped killing of a U.S. journalist they had been holding hostage. The unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man was another major source of concern for Obama and his advisers.

Criticized for being away from Washington under the circumstances, Obama broke from his vacation to deliver statements on Iraq, Missouri and journalist James Foley on four occasions, including one delivered during two days he spent at the White House in the middle of the getaway.

Obama was briefed Sunday on the release of another American who was being held hostage in Syria by an al-Qaida linked group, as well as an earthquake in California. Before leaving the island, he and his wife, Michelle, went hiking with friends.