to protect our homeland he should listen to his fbi director and secretary of homeland security and tell them and answer their question what they need to protect our country. and as far as fighting isis over in syria, we have military leaders who have strategies. they are trained. they re experienced. the president ought to listen to his own leaders and people that graduated from west point, annapolis, and have trained for years and years. we have generals and admirals who should listen to their advisers and attack and dismantle this terrorist group over in syria before more and more harm comes to our country. you re saying that the president should listen to his commanders in terms of military strategy even if that means putting more of our military troops over in the middle east perhaps on the border to create safe zones? i think i went to law school and not to west point. i don t know what our military strategists would tell us. specifically boots on the ground.
that could be gathered to go in and local forces reporter: hasn t the u.s. tried reporter: yes but haven t done it right. they tied her hands. they said we will article am an you. the local forces trying to fight assad that is much more awful, assad is ablit rated syria and sent millions of people outside syria. the u.s. conditions were impossible and say it didn t happen, couldn t happen. the whole thing is wrongly handled from the beginning if you talk to the strategists in the region and leaders around the region and all base on a high risk by the united states and people are saying as much as general hurtling says, other military strategists including cnn military strategists say it s time to re-examine because it not working and they are bringing the fight to our cities. reporter: general, are there
happy christmas. and remember, i have been talking to the strategists for much of theday and including the u.s. military strategist, and one of the cnn military strategists, in terms of the ability to conduct the assaults the distance between charlie hebdo in january of this year, and paris this last friday is strategically non-existent. there is no distance, because they are so close together in terms of the planning an operations, and that means that the people are capable, and they can plan the operations, and they can carry them out. this is incredibly dangerous, and difficult, and many of the law enforcement, and intelligent forces are saying that because of how much communication they make, some encrypted and some secret, and some even in the past looking at the game, you know, game station or whatever they are called playstation communications. so in other words, so much communication that is not
and so we are going to continue to pursue the strategy that has the best chance of working, even though it does not offer the satisfaction, i guess, of a neat headline or an immediate resolution. it s interesting to hear president obama pushing back on the idea this is just looking for a neat headline unfortunately, this is more of the same. the president has pushed back against this kind of suggestion by many military strategists for all the years of the iraq war. and he has lambasted his critics for basically having fantastical notions about what is possible. he says we can retake territory. the answer is, then, retake territory. some territory has been retain. again, with the help of ground forces. not american boots on the ground, but forces on the ground. and i ve been speaking, for instance, to cnn senior military analyst, and he believes there needs to be, you know, now a joint session, a joint strategy
with russia. russia is in there for better or for worse. russian was given basically control of the skies by just taking control of the skies. and now russia and united states have to decide how they re going to divide and conquer in syria. and he was suggesting smothering the place with bombing raids, like they did in belgrade, in serbia during kosovo, including in kosovo. and then going in, and very strategically using certain ground forces to, let s just say, take raqqa. you keep doing that and you push them out and you push them out. that s what the military strategists suggested. lieutenant colonel francona, what do you make to that? the counterargument is how many u.s. forces does it take and lounge do they end up staying there? it s one thing to take territory and it s another to hold it indefinitely if the local forces aren t up to the task of maintaining control? well, we have local forces capable of taking control. christiane amanpour just gave the best cogent military