Trump has long said he favors a 'safe zone' in Syria to prevent Basher al Assad's regime from carrying out indiscriminate airstrikes against Syrian civilians and to halt the refugee flow out of Syria.
Once you start bombing in Syria, when you start looking for targets, there will be a lot.
American public opinion, as you can see in the polls, radically changed from being against airstrikes to being heavily in favor that [President Obama] decided to do airstrikes. This is a classic example of leading from behind where he waits for public opinion. And now it's the public who's demanding he do something.
The United States has launched airstrikes against ISIS. It's being called 'Operation Approval Ratings.'
I think it's important to note that after the airstrikes began in Iraq and Syria, ISIS began a very aggressive social media campaign calling for these types of attacks, these lone wolf attacks.
In my view, airstrikes without an effective ground force are unlikely to make any meaningful contribution to defeating Isis.
The U.S. has taken an active role in wars from Libya to the Central African Republic, sent special ops forces into countries from Somalia to South Sudan, conducted airstrikes and abduction missions, even put boots on the ground in countries where it pledged it would not.
I thought the best way to topple Assad was not through airstrikes, but through equipping the moderate rebel elements.
The Air Force comes in every morning and says, 'Bomb, bomb, bomb' ... And then the State Department comes in and says, 'Not now, or not there, or too much, or not at all.'
You cannot defeat Islamic State with airstrikes only. It's necessary to cooperate with ground troops, and the Syrian army is the most efficient and powerful ground force to fight the Islamic State.
Curtis Le May wants to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong. You know how he likes to go around bombing.
Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode
As we keep up the pressure, our air campaign will continue to hit ISIL harder than ever.
We do have special forces, we do have trainers, we do have the military personnel who are helping with the airstrikes that the United States is leading so that we can try to take out ISIS infrastructure, take out their leadership.
We need to significantly increase the number of bombing runs we're conducting in Iraq and Syria.
In mid-November 2001, as they moved toward the city of Kandahar, the Taliban's de facto capital in southern Afghanistan, Amerine's team called in airstrikes against advancing Taliban units and more or less obliterated a Taliban column of a thousand men that had been dispatched from Kandahar. It was the Taliban's final play to remain in power.
Should we choose to extend our airstrikes into Syria, we will be doing this in the collective self-defence of Iraq. We would be doing this out of a responsibility to protect innocent people at risk of horrible death from the most violent people imaginable.
I did not support Operation Desert Fox.
Despite what you hear in the news from the Obama administration and the military, our strategy of conducting infrequent airstrikes and re-taking pockets of Iraq and Syria terrain will only help us achieve short-lived tactical victories.
