After 3rd Beheading, Airstrikes on ISIS ‘Not Enough’
The Islamic State’s beheading of a third victim, British aid worker David Haines, is drawing worldwide condemnation of the terrorist army.
“David has been murdered in the most callous and brutal way imaginable by an organization that is the embodiment of evil,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
Now there is a global manhunt underway for Haines’s killers. His murderer appears to be the same British-accented ISIS fighter who executed American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Paris Monday pushing President Obama’s plan to defeat ISIS and rallying U.S. allies to step up for the fight.
“There are some that are clearly prepared to take action in the air alongside the United States. And to do air strikes,” Kerry said.
Kerry has flip-flopped on whether the president’s plan is a declaration of war or an aggressive counter-terrorism operation.
But no matter what you call it, many are still questioning whether the Obama administration’s plan to arm Syrian rebels and increase airstrikes is enough.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warns there’s no way the United States can defeat ISIS without American boots on the ground.
“To destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off their financing, and destroy their capability to regenerate,” Graham said.
Former Secretary of State James Baker as well as several former intelligence officers concur with Graham’s assessment.
“The only way you’re going to destroy this organization is to confront them on the ground and kill them,” former U.S. intelligence officer Bob Ayers said. “And to use surrogates in the region – Iraq? No, Iraq is having a tough time holding onto their own territory. Syria? Syria’s involved in a civil war.”
“Other than the United States, the United Kingdom, and perhaps some of the other European countries putting ground forces on the ground—we’ll never destroy them,” he reiterated.
Meanwhile as the debate continues, ISIS is growing stronger, with an estimated 30,000 troops and reports of an increasing bank account of nearly $3 million a day from oil sales.
Some say the world is witnessing what former President George W. Bush warned about in 2007 when he talked about the dangers of pulling out of Iraq too soon.
“It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qaida,” Bush said at the time. “It means we would be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we allow the terrorist to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they have lost in Afghanistan.”
“It would mean American troops would have to return at a later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous,” he warned.
