House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Sunday U.S. troops should be considered in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“I don’t think we should ever sit back and tell our enemies what we will and will not do,” McCarthy said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
{mosads}“If we need special forces there, if that’s what the generals say, then we need to do it. If we engage in a conflict that we know this is a threat to America, we should make it so one-sided that it gets over very quickly. So, we should have everything on the table to make sure we win this.”
McCarthy also said the rise of ISIS was not an intelligence failure.
“This was a lack-of-action failure on the administration. You know, Fallujah and Ramadi fell 10 months ago,” he said.
“Former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta talks about those actions that the administration knew of this and did not take.
“So our options are more limited today. Maybe we could have handled this differently.”
McCarthy said President Obama has the legal authority for current actions against the militant group, but he will have to come back to the House if he wants to expand the efforts.
“And the House, the minute the president asks for authorization, we will debate it and we will take it up, no matter what time he wants to call that, if he does.”
“The president has to lay out a strategy,” McCarthy added. “I don’t see that for the American public. What is the goal? What is our foreign doctrine? What is our foreign policy?”