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EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) — The “vacation” is over and it’s back to the White House for President Barack Obama.

The president headed for Washington late Sunday after spending two weeks with his family on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. He will soon have to decide whether the beheading of an American by Islamic State militants is reason enough to take a step he has long resisted.

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.

The president’s own military leaders and some 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.

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