airspace, they clearly acted very quickly here in taking that plane down. the problem is we ve got a lot of countries now involved in this effort. and if we simply allow these countries to do their own thing, russia to drop its bombs where it wants, the french to attack whatever targets they want, the saudis to be involved in yemen on their own, if we allow everybody to kind of do their own thing, we are going to lose the opportunity to consolidate the effort against this enemy. isis is our enemy. we ought to remember that. we ought to go after them in a unified way. the turks, probably, knocked out that russian warplane not because it was going to invade turkish airspace or hit targets in turkey but hit targets inside syria, allies of the turkish government, the turk men, who are supported by the turkish government and opposed to bashar al assad s regime.
to destroy and defeat isis. he said that that s the mission. and i agree with that mission. he repeated it today. i think the important thing now is to apply the resources needed to accomplish that mission. we ve been there for a year. we haven t, frankly, been effective at either constraining or defeating isis. so for that reason, it seems to me we really do have to increase our effort. the right framework is in place. but we need to speed up the tempo on air strikes. we need to provide that unity of command that i talked about too make sure that all countries are coordinated in this effort. and i do think that we need to have ground forces on the ground. not our ground forces, but using ground forces by the kurds and the saudis and others, to try to regain the territory that was captured by isis. lastly, we ve got to increase our special forces presence and
served as defense secretary and cia director under president obama, president clinton s chief of staff, former u.s. congressman as well. mr. second, thanks very much for joining us. the russians say what happened today, turkish decision to knock out the russian warplane is going to complicate the situation. you want more coordination, a unified command, if you will, in the war against isis. how much does this incident that happened today jeopardize all of that? well, wolf, first of all, it s good to be with you. but i think, i think this incident just proves what everybody has been concerned about. it the fact that once russia got involved and decided to do its own air strike, it was a matter of time-we would see some kind of incident take place. and we ve seen that today with the turkish government involved in shooting that plane down.
that was the wrong way to go about it. mr. secretary that s a lesson we need to learn. the other lesson is the iraqi military. when a few thousand isis forces ragtag, if you will, mosul, the second largest city in iraq, they made some noise, that iraqi military, which the u.s. trained, equipped to tune of billions of dollars, simply ran away, the intelligence assessment said they ran away, later revised to say they redeployed to make it sound a little bit better. but that whole iraqi military turned out to be a total disaster. when you left the pentagon, did you know how bad they were? no, as a matter of fact, you know, we thought that those security forces, when we left, were actually capable of trying to provide security for that country. what happened was that maliki, has he continued to be the leader in that country, became
country. you and own have known each other a long time. going back to days as a u.s. congressman from california, and i ve seen you at omb, later at the white house, later at the cia, later at defense secretary, you know a lot, you re one of the smartest guys out there in national security. do you ever get call from the president of the united states since leaving office asking you, saying, leon, what do you think i should do? you know, i always am ready, if someone wants to call me for advice, i m happy to provide it. i ve made my views known through staff in the white house. look, i i think the president has the aides that are in those positions now. hopefully they are honestly telling him what needs to be done in order to be able to go after isis. he is our commander in chief. you know, wolf, one of the things that concerns me in terms of our national security is