so i think they understand that at some point in this process, bashar al assad has to go. they do it as a favor to themselves. i think the russians understand the same thing. we have to be flexible that he s not going to go as the first step in a political process. i can t sit here and tell you we re going to be able to partner with the iranians here, but it s worth trying. in the meantime, by working with the kurds, by working with some arabs, we can perhaps slow the momentum of isis. i think this is a time buy, but what we re doing it helps not calm, but at least make the situation on the ground from getting worse. and at least it creates a backdrop where diplomacy can succeed. right now we have no backdrop. we have an imbalance of power that works against us. do you think that, you know, between the 3,500 troops in iraq
was our firm belief in the experience of the last decade that the most effective and sustainable way to deal with this problem was to have people who are willing to fight for their own country, do the work on the ground with our very strong support, with our air support, intelligence, weapons, advice. people taking back their own country. in the past year, as a result of these efforts and as result of much greater coherence among the iraqis and the coalition, the territory that isis controls is down 35% from where it was when the coalition was first formed. thousands of isil members have been killed. much of their material has been destroyed. in many parts of iraq, they are on their heels, not on their toes. they re still capable of taking the initiative. they still have a base and
was our firm belief from the experience of the last decade that the most effective and sustainable way to deal with this problem was to have people who were willing to fight for their own country, do the work on the ground with our air support, intelligence, weapons, advice. but people taking back their own country. so in the past year, as a result of these efforts and as a result of much greater coherence among the iraqis special the coalition, the territory that isil controls is down 35% from where it was when the coalition was first formed. thousands of isil members have been killed, much of their material has been destroyed. and in many parts of iraq, they are on their heels, not on their toes. but they re still capable,
restore iraq. i don t think it s our goal to restore functioning national syria. i would say our goal is to keep as many innocent people alife and keep the terrorists from roll up territory. i think our goal is what we want to prevent the even that relatively modest goal will turn out to be sufficient. i think the announcement made over this week is consistent with trying to keep the middle east from going over the cliff rather than trying to remake the middle east in our image. stop it from blowing up anymore. very, very interesting conversation. thank you so much. thank you. now from syria to iraq. the united states is talking about putting a handful of troops in syria, but already has thousands in iraq. how should we think about the
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