The Republican chairman of the Senate committee on Homeland Security said Tuesday that it’s time to join other countries and send ground troops back into the Middle East to root out and destroy the Islamic State.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told MSNBC that he supports a plan like the one put together more than two decades ago.
“What I’ve been suggesting is, assemble a coalition of the willing, like George H.W. Bush did in the first Gulf War, where the U.S. supplied about two-thirds of the troops, our coalition partners supplied a third, and paid for about 85 percent of the effort,” Johnson said.
He said that would show the world is committed to eliminate the risk the Islamic State is posing to all western nations.
Johnson said that so far, Obama has said the U.S. needs to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State, but said that plan is too open ended.
“We need to defeat ISIS a lot sooner than ‘ultimately,’ though, because every day that ISIS is not shown as a clear loser, they’re perceived as winning, they’ll continue to inspire the types of attacks we’ve seen here,” he said.
Johnson said a coalition force that can project power on the ground would help collect other regional partners who can also chip into the effort.
“If we lead with America and NATO, I think the Gulf states also would be supplying not only the financial support, but also military support as well,” he said. “We needs Sunni partners, that’s why we need the government in Baghdad, not relying on Iran, but really relying on other Gulf states as well as the United States.”
Johnson added that he’s being given intelligence showing that the Islamic State is “not that effectively militarily,” and that a ground operation would likely be successful. He also indicated that after taking back Raqqa and other Islamic State strongholds, the goal would be to remain in the region.
“The historic blunder was us pulling out of Iraq,” he said.
