“Do We Fight ISIS Now and Stop Them or Wait Until They Get Here?”
Former Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill Says Administration Needs to “Think Outside the Box.”
It’s been a victorious week for ISIS, and a nerve-wracking one for the Western world. After accomplishing what many feared they would — take over the major city of Ramadi — ISIS seizes another town in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Terming it a “tactical setback,” the Obama Administration attests the U.S. coalition against the terror is “not losing.”
Such words of assurance contradict a just-released report that voices Special Ops’ frustration with the current strategy and their desire to take their fight against ISIS directly into Iraq and Syria.
FOX News’ Gretchen Carlson invites former Special Ops fighter Robert J. O’Neill on her show Real Story for insight:
Carlson: “Special Ops have basically given their message to President Obama, saying that ‘we are doing everything through cell phones. It’s hard to do much when you can’t go outside the wire’.”
O’Neill: “That’s the word I’m getting, too. They’re frustrated with a lack of a plan. Right now with really nobody on the ground it’s difficult for them to try to make phone calls with their sources. It’s hard to see what’s going on. And a lot of people I know are frustrated.”
Carlson: “What they’re saying is that they’re fighting from remote locations. Meaning by actual remote control because they’re not physically there.”
O’Neill: “That’s true. They’re not physically there. And that’s a problem, too. It’s not going to be this all or nothing strategy where we need to reinvade Iraq. We just need some troops on the ground to reassure our allies that they have our support as far as medical evacuation, intelligence and close air support. Right now we’re seeing when ISIS fights — for example, the government troops in Iraq — they don’t trust their own chain of command, so they don’t stick around. They don’t fight. They leave.”
Carlson: “Why should the U.S. fight when the Iraqis don’t even want to fight the battle for themselves?”
O’Neill: “If we allow the Islamic State to form, it’s going to be a major training ground for terrorists to attack the West. They’ll attack our friends in Europe and ultimately they want to attack us here in the United States. We need to decide as a nation do we fight them now and stop them or wait ‘til they get here.”
O’Neill’s advice to the Administration on winning the war on terror…“think a little outside the box.” How so?
O’Neill: “A Marine expeditionary unit out of the Mediterranean Sea into Western Syria and take it that way…or put some troops in some of the bases we have established.”
With unflinching confidence in the U.S. military, O’Neill urges…
O’Neill: “We need to meet ISIS and we need to fight them. We’ve proven, recently, once Americans fight ISIS toe to toe it’s not even a competition. We can wipe these guys out.”