Ground Partner News Today

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Terrorism and ierdogans missio to "defeat terrorism." >> im all for that but that does not appear to be what president trump is setting us up for here. the threat americans feared most for the past years has been isis. of course, what trump has done here is abandon our main ground partner against isis, the syrian kurds and for the syrian kurds to instead fend off the turks. doesnt seem like a policy geared towards defeating terrorism. >> why does the president have so much faith in erdogans inte...

I thought the saudis talked about putting together a coalition. >> talking about putting together a coalition and having anything remotely that looks like a multinational force or what about arab special forces to help the syrians. how about cutting through some of the mill claims the president made yesterday. if you sit there and listen. it sound like they had some military successes. the military has ramped up in the past month or two and making military progress. >> in ground we had some grou...

We should be doing we can have a conversation about. theres a sense you got to step it up and we have to think about what it is it will take to get a ground partner in syria. >> its not just on the military front. yesterday we had general here who asked why arent we working the diplomatic channels more. thats his complaint. we just arent reaching out to our allies and building coalition. i just dont know. >> a lot of emphasis is on the longer shot which is to get a deal about future political or...

A large city in the hands of isil. you cant fix iraq without dealing with syria. the story thats not being talked about they pick up the hometown in libya. we need a regional strategy and we dont have one. >> lindsey, you mentioned the key missing factor which is a ground partner in syria. what is your thinking about the best way to generate one and how many more u.s. troops are you thinking it will take to require and make it valuable on the ground there? >> i think well know more about whats l...

A territory is more taken than held. a coalition of the willing that would include the united states, france, united kingdom, arab states and even russia under the right circumstances or carried out under nato or united nations. the packaging matters less than the results. symbolic declarations of war ought to be considered with caution. the islamic state appeared to be winning every day. >> a lot of options we could move forward with. >> absolutely. we should be increasing the pace and the targ...

What to make of the white houses apparent bout face. the decision to spend 50 special operations forces into syria after saying for years it would not put boots on the ground. joining me now is richard at the state department. he joins me from the council on foreign relations where hes the president. is this a big shift or just an enhancement of an existing mission? >> its probably closer to that. its a significant shift. its meant to correct the basic deficiency in u.s. policy where we havent h...

>> i think secretary gates is right on the mark. in fact, he might not even go far enough. having u.s. advisers accompany their units into combat was one of the things that enabled the iraqi army to be successful during the period of u.s. involvement in the iraq war. the other part of that was having u.s. units on the ground partner with those iraqi forces. so clearly, the strategy is not working now. there is not enough trainers. theyre not accompanying the units into iraq and as a result, the ...

Ought to have learned from the middle east. i think the idea were going to get a wonderful moderate syrian opposition to make a political and military difference is a pipe dream. either we have to work with the forces that exist, kurds, sunni tribes, or we have got to get serious about working with turkey, working with the iran governments, working with nato and cobbling together an expeditionary force. here is the political end game we want to bring about. we, the united states, are prepared to...

Even if we push back isis, so what, bashar al assad can fill the vacuum. that cant be our strategy but thats what its turned into. we need a ground partner. >> you write in your book about the process of decision making and the way in which in the obama administration its all about very centralized. my sense is obama views the middle east as kind of a hell hole thats going to suck america dry. he wants to contain it and cordon it off, give it to asia, do some of the bigger, more strategic things...