US Has No Plan to Defeat Daesh, Needs to Send Boots on Ground

US House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that the United States should have an "honest discussion" with the US military to outline a plan that would include boots on the ground and special forces fighting the Daesh terrorist group.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States lacks a clear strategy to destroy the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group, and the only way to defeat the Daesh would be to put boots on the ground, US House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Tuesday.

"I don't see a clear plan to defeat ISIL…from Paris to San Bernardino, to Philadelphia now this morning to Istanbul," McCarthy said in an interview with MSNBC when asked what about President Barack Obama’s foreign policy he disliked the most. "This world is unsafe and we can’t leave this problem just setting out there to the next president."

McCarthy explained, ahead of Obama’s final State of the Union address, that the United States should have an "honest discussion" with the US military to outline a plan that would include boots on the ground and special forces fighting the terrorist group.

"You're going have to have the combination of that [troops on the group] with special forces in there to make sure, you can't win this just by the air," the House majority leader said. "That is the only strategy that will win in the long run."

Since 2014, the US-led coalition of some 60 nations has been carrying out airstrikes against Daesh, starting first in Iraq and later in Syria since September, however, without the approval of the Syrian government or the UN Security Council.