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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 nation's. 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 target set of the military strikes. i would put far more special forces and intelligence types into syr...

What to make of the white house's 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 he's the president. is this a big shift or just an enhancement of an existing mission? >> it's probably closer to that. it's a significant shift. it's meant to correct the basic deficiency in u.s. policy where we haven't had a ground partner for years and we've learned we can't do it from the air or create aground ...

>> 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. they're not accompanying the units into iraq and as a result, the iraqi army is failing at pretty much every task its undertaken. >> that's pretty extraordinary. wha...

Ought to have learned from the middle east. i think the idea we're 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 be involved. i think the turks could conceivably be involved in that situation. the jordanians, th...

Even if we push back isis, so what, bashar al assad can fill the vacuum. that can't be our strategy but that's what it's 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 it's all about very centralized. my sense is obama views the middle east as kind of a hell hole that's 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 he wants to do. so he's never going to embrace a kind of very ambitious strategy there because...