Public that hasnt had all that much time to get used to being out of iraq that the u. S. Has to go back. But this time its only to get iraq ready again to defend itself from the for real la army that controls big chunks of iraq and syria. Training iraqis. Training syrians and fighting from the air with partners doing a lot of heavy lifting along with the u. S. Its the recipe for success prayer partne success president obama gave. I will not hesitate to take action in syria as well as iraq. First. We will conduct airstrikes against these terrors. Second well increase our support to forces fighting the terrorists on the ground. Third, we will continue to draw on our substantial terrorism capabilities to prevent isil attacks. Fourth, well continue to provide humanitarian assistance to those victimized by this organization. And its the next phaseish obama fulfilled his Campaign Pledge getting americans out of iraq the robbery military is fighting Islamic Forces on the ground now slowly just wednesday iraqs Defense Ministry released this video of troops retaking the district in anbar province. There were 150 militants in this area. Two are have been captured. So much of western iraq was overrun by the militants in the first place because iraqi troops fled. He promised there would be no combat troops in the fighting instead regional fighters supported by the u. S. This will be a steady relentless effort to take out isil wherever they exist using our air power and support for partners forces on the ground. The u. S. Will send 457 more military advisers to iraq and build a coalition of acre countries to join the front lines. Secretary of state john kerry is in saudi arabia today meeting with officials there. He hopes to recruit countries like jordan and turkey, too. This is a fight where the syrian opposition. And the iraqi forces themselves have significant capacity, some of it has to be retrained and refocused, but we are confident together with the efforts of other countries involved that will happen, and it will be sufficient to the task. The president authorized airstrikes in iraq last month. But he he is tated to do the same with syria. Until now the u. S. Has only modestly supported what it calls moderate rebels in their fight with bashar alassad. Now the obama solution is to identify, train and arm those rebels to counter i. S. In the fight against isil we cannot fight an asaad regime. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like isil while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve syrias crisis once and for all. What risks come putting more firepower into the hands of disparate fighting groups . The president ended his address wednesday with this thought. Obama in our own safety, our own security depends on the willingness to defend this education and up hold the values we stand for, timeless ideals that will survive long after hate and destruction has been vanquished from the earth. A closer look at the controversy plans laid out in basic detail. Training the iraqi army and fighting terrorists in syria all while American Forces fight from the air. What you need to know about this plan this time on the program. Joining us for this conversation from our studio. Our guests. Gentlemen, welcome all. This idea of vetting rebel groups inside syria, and then having them trained by the saudis to fight the Islamic State in syria is finding these people and training them going to be as easy as the president made it sound last night . Lets say that its going to take more than a week. Im glad you you used the word Counter Insurgency rather than the president s word of Counter Terrorism. It has significant resources, manpower. It controls a lot of territory. I have little confidence in saudi capability to engage in thin the way described. My focus would be more on turkey and jordan. Those are the two Key Countries that i would lean on to vet, identify, and further provide military support to rebels who are primarily based today in aleppo. Wasnt the difficulty early on in this conflict in 2012 an and 2013 figuring out who it was safe to arm and train and back inside syria . Absolutely. That challenge has not evaporated. There is now a new equipment by this administration to step up that effort. Lets see what materializes and what it produces. Rick, you train them, you set them loose in syria, but they dont have a sellby date. Even if they accomplish their objective they are now a trained armed group inside of a country. What do you do then . The president calls this a Counter Terrorism, what do we do after train them and get them on the ground . Who do they fight . Are they fighting the al nusra front . Isil, the assad regime . And to what extent will they have the capabilities necessary to conduct those types of operations without having some additional support, probably u. S. Military support to help them integrate into the broader ration . I dont see how this works out. As long as youre equipping them i guess they cant become autonomous. They have no support of their own. They have no support of their own. They dont have the ability to operate with adjacent units and they dont have a way to communicate with the aircraft supporting them. Unless you have u. S. Capability embedded with them theyll need continued support to include boots on the ground. Early on was recognized just after going the Islamic State in iraq wasnt going to work if they could simply withdraw back in syria. Are you relieved that the president seems ready to widen the front and include syria in this operation . I think its good to see a commitment, and its good to see that he would extend these operations and go after syria. But i think i am worried when the reference was made to somalia and yemen. It sounds to me that there is something missed in reading the fundamentals of the challenge, the very definition. This is not somal somalia and yemen. The resources they have, the thousands of people who are pouring in. The inroads they have to some extent jordan. The expertise theyve managed to gather. This is a formidable enemy. I would not dismiss them and assume by unleashing the m militias they will disappear. They will not disappear. This is going to be long termed and entrenched. The more you get others to sign off on doing this and get them involved, the more chances you have with dealing with it. It is way beyond iraq, and it cannot be fixed by air. You sound skeptical about using the comparison to yemen and somalia, but in those two countries drones were used heavily in order to decapitate alshabab and alqaida in the arabian peninsula. The idea was to continue to take out the leadership, and you neutralize the effectiveness of these organizations. Is that true . We all know that such radical movement of alqaeda and its different franchises, they breed when there is chaos. They breed when there is destruction everywhere. The more you bomb and create destruction, there is no form of order, they have more recruits. Its just the way they mastered that art and survived and adap adapted to constant treasure. To me, from my perspective we really need to be careful are we feeding them or are we up rooting them. Quickly, do you share the concern about making a parallel to somalia and yemen . Yes, i do. This is like killing one bee at a time even though youre dealing with the whole beehive. Drones are not going to be sufficient. The president also knows that airstrikes are not going to be sufficient. In his speech last night he did not mean to say that there would be exclusive reliance on airstrikes. There will be other means at his disposal that i think he would be ready to use, sea launch, cru cruise missiles. Strategic bombers more intense campaign in syria. The airstrikes by themselves will not be efficien military efficient militarily speaking. The United States made a new one that crumbled in the face of the Islamic State offensive. What will be the new one this time. Stay with us. Afford to retire. We explore their life on on the road, living in vehicles with no place to call home. The stream, on Al Jazeera America welcome back to inside story on Al Jazeera America. Im ray suarez. Americas coalition and the plan to fight the Islamic State this time on the program. Pushing back against the Guerrilla Army while the u. S. Presses the fight from the air. Thats the plan, but what has the United States learned in his last experience in iraq thats going to help us not make the same mistakes this time around . Thats a good question, the problem is if you look back at 2011 there were shortfalls in logistics, maintenance, communications, intelligence, operational planning the. They recommended the troops to continue the missions necessary to get the iraqis to the point where they could stand on their own. When you look at the very small number of troops that the president is engaging, 13, 1400 troops at this point, there appears to be no ability to be able to conduct that type of advised Training Missions not only to get those forces back to where they were in 2011, but also reconstitute the four decisions that have essentially disintegrated since the end of may. I dont know how this works out give the unwillingness of the president to devote more resources to accomplish the strategy. But the task you set out will take a long time. This will take a long time. The United States has to be willing to stay engaged in iraq. Iraq, if go back and look at the mission of having a strong stable line of iraq as a partner in the region that always meant having a longterm commitment between the United States and the government of iraq. When that ended, it caused a significant problem both in iraq and also in the u. S. Relations with our neighboring countries. And so i think we have to be prepared for one more troops to go to iraq, and, two, more importantly to do this for a long time. How long, three months, three years, five years, what are we talking about . Whenever you talk about putting an end date on the strategy you artificially contain what youre set out to do. It ought to be a mission with the purposes of this is what were going to achieve, and sufficient time. If it takes ten years if thats what is necessary to protect our interests, which is why were there in the first place, then you spend ten years on doing it. You dont place on it an artificial end date. The new iraqi Prime MinisterHaider Al Abadi say that the new factions are on board, theyre ready to support this american mission. Are you skeptical when you hear that . I think compared to where we are two months ago where we started from, i think he made substantial progress. That is real compared to where we were. But compared to where we need to be i think that it is still some distance to cover. Up until now the two critical ministries are not held, the ministry of defense and interior. This is where the guns are, the armed vehicles move in, go to neighborhoods, arrest people and do everything. Unless the sunnies and the rest of the nation have confidence they look at those two ministries as National Ministries not factional ministries, unless that happens and they look at this as forces that is the loose like militia, i think iraq is not really out of trouble. Supports from riyadh say that what brought the saudis in off the sidelines was the appointment of Haider Al Abadi as the new Prime Minister. That was a necessary precondition, to move nouri almaliki. I think its a shift, but its not nominal. I think Haider Al Abadi is a different politician and leader than his predecessor, but what moved the saudis to move with iraqi closely is the threat of isis that they have tens of thousands of people inside saudi arabia who could turn against the house, and that makes the threat existential to the saudis. On the last edition of this program it was noted that germany for the First Time Since the second world war, is aiding a country outside of its borders militarily aiding one side in a military conflict. This is a big deal. Its the peshmerga. Its the kurdish army. Does that complicate the future pick of iraq . Kurds has been a hot topic in iraq and for the irans as well as the syrians. I dont want to saylook, the kurds have been a huge partner for the United States and the iraqi government. There has been a shift in attitude were baghdad to the kurds given the threat posed by isis. There has been a conflicting relationship between the two sides for a long time, but give the threat theyre both facing there is less of adversarial relationship, and this gives us hope for a better relationship in the future. I think the issue of independence would have to be postponed. It would have to be deferred. Its still a very hot topic. Wait, wait, wait a minute. Still a very hot topic sort of says that something well talk about down the road. If youve just asked someone to help you put out a fire thats going to burn your house down, when youre done you cant just say thanks and see ya when you know that one of the things they want is what theyve been gunning for for decades. Short of independence i think there are more pressing issues theyre asking for, and frankly not that we should go ahead and ask for a referendum and see who really wants independence, i bet you the majority wants it, but ther they are also smart enough and pragmatic enough to push for independence but not confronting the Regional Community and neighbors. I think there are pressing issues of finances, oil, further decentralization and being an effective part of the iraqi body politics. The issue of independence could be deferred, it would have to be discussed some time down the road. Well be back after this short break. There is a difference between the plans to continue battling from the air and Training Forces to do it on the ground. Time frame. What will the u. S. Be doing in the meantime as iraqi army 2. 0 is trained, and a nonterrorist syrian resistence is vetted and prepared. Stay with us. Youre watching inside story on Al Jazeera America. Im ray suarez. Were assessing the plans for president s speech to the nation. Still with us, our guests. The president took great pains in his National Address to ensure americans that the u. S. Is fought getting enmeshed again. Youre talking to an entirely american audience. Do you want to get them ready for the idea that this is longer and more complicated than the president was telling them last night. I think the president hinted clearly that its going to take longer to conclude this business. Nobody has the illusion that this is going to take a few months. I think it will take years. Up until now there is no understanding or agreement on how to chase them inside syria. So my hunch is that this is going to take a long time and its going to get yes,yer, and there will be a lot of bac backlash because of that intervention, and its going to be messy. Its not a clean cut war by which we can preserve our position, and its going to take some international involvement. Rick, can the United States keep its promise not to r reinvolve Ground Troops in that part of the world . I think it would be impossible t to achieve. If you look at 20042010 when the United States and iraq were countering alqaeda and iraq at that point. It took tremendous earth from our Counter Terrorism forces to finally expel them and get them to the point where theyre nearly defeated. To think that the iraqis could do this on their own without engagement of u. S. Forces and special Operation Forces i think is a fanciful idea that could never achieve the objectives. It does not sound like americans are ready for that. I think its unclear what theyre ready for. I think the beheadings shown on tv fundamentally changed opinions in terms of the threat posed by this organization. If there is president ial leadership that continued to demonstrate that this was an u. S. National interest, and beneath to do this to protect not only our friends and allies but to defeat this organization and Partner Organizations that has real threat or potential threats to u. S. Homeland and u. S. Individuals i think americans would support this. Its been long said that plans dont survive the first shot. Will a solution to the problem of the Islamic State resemble in any way what the president laid out last night . Well, first disrupt the enemy it this has to be happening on a sustained basis. You have to be on the offensive to keep it on the run but the thing that would take a long time, and this is what we would agree on is the defeat of the organization, and we mean the ideology itself. That would require fixing the politics of syria and iraq, and the disruption of the enemy to prevent it from growing and gaining new capabilities and posing a threat to the homeland is currently nonexistent, by the way, that would require sustained military efforts to disrupt it. But again, barack obama stressed the need of the people of that area to do most of the work. Is that something that they can do. They have to do it. This is their region, this is their lives. Everything is at stake for them. Thank you all. Good to talk to you. Thank you. That brings us to the end of this edition of inside story. Thanks for being with us. The program may be over but the conversation continues. We want to hear what you think about the issues raised on this show. Are you ready as an american for reengagement in some form in iraq or syria, for that matter, log on to our facebook page, send us your thoughts on twitter. The handle is a. J. Inside story a. M. Or reach me directly at ray suarez news. In washington, im ray suarez. The coalition against isil, discussing plans to take on the Islamic State of iraq and the levant. Im jane dutton. Also in this program the u. S. Takes over peacekeeping as the country tries to reconcile deep divisions. Money and oil but will it mix with an independence scotland . Well report from aberdeen just three days ahead of the crucial vote. Plus microsoft is paying 2 billion for a computer