still waiting for more reinforcements for additional paramilitary shia fighters. those shia fighters backed by iran controversial but highly effective, also waiting for the campaign to arm the sunni tribes to begin. we additionally spoke to the deputy governor of al anbar province who said at this stage at least the iraqi government is taking anbar seriously. he d been warning of the fall of ramadi for months. now he says the government is beginning to take action not necessarily because it s worried for anbar but because if those other areas and anbar fall to isis that means the terrorist organization would be at baghdad s doorstep chris. arwa thank you very much for the reporting and the analysis. let s bring in now general stanley mcchrystal the former commander of international security forces in afghanistan also the author of the new book team of teams new rules of engagement for complex world.
it s almost they change through experience in the moment. what did that tell you? and what was the remedy? if you look at it isis is the same way. al qaeda was not this centrally controlled brilliant entity. it was just constantly adapting network of associations. that allowed them to just be almost completely adaptable to any area responding whatnot it also defied the ability to go after one or two key leaders or strategic notes and have them collapse. what that tells me is we re in a complex world where traditional almost mechanical approaches to something march armies forward on a map and take terrain is no longer applicable. you ve got to have this organically adaptable approach to things. do you believe there is the resolve on the part of these people who are fundamental aspects of a successful coalition to do what they need to do to win? do they care enough about anything outside their own borders? do they feel as strongly about extremism as they would need to to have this ki
commander and chief. and voters do deserve to hear where people stand on this issue of their line for sending troops in. but it is really highlighting sort of the disarray in the republican party right now to hear some of these people someone not moderate like george pataki saying we need to send troops on the ground there. if you look at the polling right now, americans are pretty evenly split about whether they want to put boots on the ground to fight isis. that s not necessarily true of republicans though. there s a lot more support among republicans to put troops on the ground in this battle. governor pataki has said do it. lindsey graham has said do it or at least lean forward toward doing it. santorum and rick perry also saying likely to have to do it. some others have said i don t want to rule it out but let s wait. the policy has really shifted on this just in the last week. it s now okay in the republican party to say that the iraq war invasion was a mistake. i think there
alisyn that s very true. again, if you establish the desired instate, which is to have isis crushed, moved back maybe have a smaller pocket u.s. ground forces can make that happen. there s no doubt in my military mind or in yours that that s an achievable goal. the issue is the united states is not established that as the goal. so we re in a situation where we re going to have this slow burn and everybody s going to kind of watch it. it s the new normal. again, it may be okay the united states may be acknowledging that it s okay to have iraq kind of break apart and we hold onto baghdad and everybody ends up with some relative pieces. that s a big challenge. but if that s what the u.s. wants to do that s what happens. sure. but when you say this is an achievable goal what do you mean? we could stamp out isis with ground troops? ground troops could take care of the problem absolutely. the united states could put ground forces on the ground absolutely and that would occur. i mean th
destruction and moving toward that goal. senior international correspondent arwa damon joins us with the latest from baghdad. up until now, arwa that s been almost a joke to suggest that isis could get that far. but now? reporter: now it clearly is a very different situation, chris. because the iraqi government according to the deputy provincial governor of anbar province is finally beginning to take this situation in iraq s sunni heartland seriously. as far back as november officials in ramadi were calling for reinforcements were warning that the provincial capital would fall without them. and then finally following relentless wave after wave of suicide bombers that city did fall. the iraqi forces that were trying to hold out there quite simply could not any longer to try to keep their positions. many of them say would have been suicidal. what is happening right now is that in an area where there is a military base this is located right between fallujah and ramadi both under isis co