President Barack Obama meets Wednesday with generals planning his assault against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq as he wraps up a two-day trip devoted to sudden national security crises over jihadism and Ebola.

Obama will sit down with General Lloyd Austin, chief of US Central Command at his Florida headquarters, to assess how the military is following through on his new strategy to combat IS announced last week.

US jets in Iraq have already made good on Obama’s vow to expand the mandate of American forces to go after the extremist Sunni group in Iraq, following the first raids of the stepped up campaign outside Baghdad overnight Monday.

an F/A-18E Super Hornets attached to the Tomcatters of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31 on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77)on August 1, 2014 in the Gulf.

His effort won a rare Republican endorsement on Tuesday when the party’s leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate backed his strategy. But some lawmakers still complained it lacks punch, reflecting the president’s long-held desire to avoid another Middle East war.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that Obama had asked to visit MacDill Air Force base, where Centcom is headquartered, after giving his speech on his new anti-IS strategy on September 10.

The president “plans to discuss the plan for building an international coalition to degrade and destroy (IS),” Earnest said.

Obama, who will give public remarks during his trip to the base, will also meet senior representatives from nations that form part of Central Command’s theater of operations, which encompasses the troubled belt of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.

“Many of these nations will be an important part of the international coalition that the President will be leading against IS,” said Earnest.

Obama is under pressure to demonstrate that his coalition of European and Middle Eastern nations is a legitimate fighting force and not simply an alliance drummed up by his administration for political convenience.

– Intense diplomacy –

Officials say the president will conduct intense diplomacy next week on firming up the grouping to go after Islamic State, when he is at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The White House was forced Tuesday into its latest effort to clarify its strategy on IS, after his top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, said US advisors could yet be sent into combat alongside Iraqi forces against IS.

That statement appeared to call into question the president’s repeated vow that there will be no US “boots on the ground” deployments in Iraq, after he fulfilled his campaign promise to bring US forces home.