GOP candidates' positions on ISIS

[Delta4Embassy]

1 day old but should be fairly accurate.

How Republican candidates would respond to ISIS - CNNPolitics.com

"Lindsey Graham

Graham is by far the most hawkish of the field. He wants 10,000 ground troops to fight ISIS "to fight them in their backyard," in both Iraq and Syria, specifically the city of Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold that the French have been bombing for the last two days. He, along with much of the field, has also called for a no-fly zone.

Graham's call for troops puts him in line with 62% of Republicans, according to a CNN/ORC poll, but narrowly at odds with the greater public -- 51% of Americans oppose ground troops. "There is a 9/11 coming and it's coming from Syria if we don't disrupt their operations inside of Syria," Graham said.

Donald Trump
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A bombing campaign is the basis of Trump's ISIS strategy. The real estate tycoon said before the Paris attacks that he knows more about ISIS than current military generals, who have largely derided his approach.

"I would just bomb those suckers," Trump said Thursday in Iowa before the Paris attack. "That's right. I'd blow up the pipes, I'd blow up the refineries, every single inch, there would be nothing left."

On Twitter, he took credit for an American air raid on trucks used to smuggle oil in eastern Syria. "Remember, I was the one who said attack the oil (ISIS source of wealth) a long time ago. Everyone scoffed, now they're attacking the oil."

He has advocated for ground troops in Iraq, but not in Syria. "

other candidates at link.


We need to join Russia and whoever else and just level Raqqa for starters. No one left in town byt ISIS and their allies, all 'innocent people' left and became refugees a long time ago.

No-fly zone, abandon regime change in Syria (never works and just results in total chaos in the region as with Iraq and Afganistan,) full-scale ground invasion of ISIS targets like Raqqa and everywhere else they claim to have territory. Soldiers wanna fight, they don't share civilain-aversion to doing their job. So stop treating our military like Disneyland furries. Point who ya want them to kill and say "Sic em!"

Use local arab allies to secure and occupy former ISIS positions instead of US troops.

If ISIS claims 30,000 fighters send 300,000 and wipe them off the face of the Earth.

 

[waltky]

Senators call for boots on the ground against ISIS...

Senators Call for US-Led Ground War against ISIS
Nov 16, 2015 | Republican Sen. John McCain and GOP presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham made a renewed push for committing thousands of U.S. ground forces to fight extremists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the wake of the Paris attacks.

The U.S. military needs to lead a large-scale ground campaign made up of regional armies from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to defeat ISIS forces occupying large portions of Iraq, McCain and Graham said on CNN. The response came Monday after terrorist linked to ISIS carried out a series of coordinated attacks Friday on innocent civilians in Paris. The attacks left 129 dead and hundreds more injured. To protect Americans at home, "I'm looking for an away game when it comes to ISIL, not a home game. I want to fight them in their backyard," Graham said, using another term for ISIS. "I have a plan to destroy ISIS," he added. "Use the armies in the region which are large and professional; integrate our forces among those armies with the French and other NATO nations."

U.S. ground forces would make up about 10 percent of the entire ground campaign of 80,000 to 100,000 troops, Graham said. "Go in on the ground and destroy these people before they hit us here at home and continue to do damage," he said. "There is no other way to defeat this enemy." President Obama today described the Paris attacks as a "terrible" setback in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State, but reiterated his opposition to committing U.S. ground troops in Iraq. "This is not conventional warfare," Obama said at a meeting of the Group of 20 in Turkey. "We play into the ISIL narrative when we act as if they are a state and we use routine military tactics that are designed to fight a state that is attacking another state; that is not what is going on here."

Obama said he has no doubt U.S. military forces could defeat ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, but such a move would require a long-term occupation to ensure they do not return. "Let's assume we were to send 50,000 troops into Syria; what happens if there is a terrorist attack generated from Yemen?" Obama said. "Do we then send more troops in there or Libya perhaps? Or what if there is a terrorist network that is operating anywhere else in North Africa or in Southeast Asia? A strategy has to be one that can be sustained. "And the strategy that we are pursuing goes after targets limiting wherever possible the capabilities of ISIL on the ground, systematically going after their leadership, their infrastructure ... cutting off their borders and squeezing the space in which they operate until ultimately, we are able to defeat them. That is the strategy we are going to pursue."

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