Washington Free Beacon managing editor Aaron MacLean discussed the growing discontent with President Obama’s foreign policy Monday on Fox Business, underscoring the importance of enacting a serious strategy to destroy the Islamic State.
"I think the first and obvious thing we need to do is finish the job with ISIS," he said. He cited a recent CNN/ORC Poll, which shows that 53 percent of Americans support sending ground troops to fight the Islamic State, as evidence that Americans are disillusioned with Obama’s foreign policy.
"The poll numbers that you're seeing, showing now a narrow majority... [supporting] ... ground action against ISIS, is evidence of the fact that people are losing faith with the president's strategy," he said.
The public, MacLean said, is drawing the common-sense conclusion that if the Islamic State were eliminated, the growing terrorist threat would be, too.
"They believe, I think reasonably, that if ISIS ceased to exist, there would be fewer opportunities for radicalization," he said. "There certainly would be no more directly-controlled attacks conducted by ISIS like we saw in Paris or against the Russian airliner in Egypt."
He said that all options – from deploying special operations troops to conventional forces – should be considered in order to "finish the job" and destroy IS.
"If the job needs to involve American troops having the leash taken off of them in Iraq, such that special operations troops can fight alongside their Iraqi partners, then so be it," he said. "If it needs … limited use of conventional forces like we saw for example in Afghanistan in 2001-2002 when we took down the Taliban, then so be it."
"Maybe that is what it needs to involve, because right now letting this thing go on in this protracted fashion is costing lives," he said.