really has not been leading. i want to know what the president s plan is. he drew a he bluffed with his red line in syria. i think he was slow to recognize what was happening with isis. we need a plan from a president who s engaged, not who seems to be just running out the clock. and as senator casey mentioned, he has asked for this $500 million that would be aimed at appropriately vetted opposition forces in syria. senator casey, you ve been calling for that for a long time. do you think we missed our window of opportunity there, even if congress goes along with this request, is it too little too late? i don t think it s too little too late. i would have preferred it happened earlier, but i do think in response to what john said, i think that the president s request for support for the opposition in syria is the beginning of a new approach and a strategy to have better
isis. that s the theory of it. so i don t even think anyone is claiming that money is going to bring this all to a conclusion. what we have is a giant sort of strategic vacuum that goes almost all the way from aleppo in syria to baghdad in iraq. and everybody is fighting over it. the saudis are involved. assad s regime, the iranians are huge players, these guys from isis. it s a complete mess. and the united states, unless it wanted to get in a huge way with all kinds of hundreds of thousands of troops, which we re not going to do, we re kind of reduced to this kind of measure of attempting to manipulate the balance from a long distance through proxies we don t entirely trust, going to mara s point. i think at best it s a prolonged, difficult struggle, and i wouldn t bet on any outcome. and nuri al maliki says he s staying. can he survive? can he be helpful in any way? he s not helpful. part of the reason we don t have
maliki and say, you know, look, you need to be much more representative. perhaps we need another prime minister. but that shouldn t be the issue we re focused on today. or if at that point maliki feels secure, he can tell us, we don t care about your demands. i think the most we re going to be able to accomplish, if anything, maybe is deny that space to isis. to build something positive in that space, i m not so sure. all right. we got to leave it there on this topic. panel, stick around. we re going to see you a little later. when we come back, the questions over lois lerner s missing e-mails continues. congressman darrell issa joins us next to discuss what s next in this ongoing investigation.
i think it s very important the well-vetted syrian opposition has the resources to be able to fight and to change the dynamic on the battlefield. if that changes, that will have a positive impact not only in syria but in iraq as well. and senator casey, i want to come back to you on that point but first give senator barrasso a chance to weigh in. do you think president obama needs to come to congress involving iraq? if the president wants boots on the ground, yes, he must come to congress in that situation. but a strong foreign policy means that when a president says something that those words have meaning followed through on. we talked about syria, isis, arming the rebels. there are 30 different groups, moderate groups, six larger groups within that with different interactions. you re not exactly sure who to help and who they attack. you right now have assad attacking isis. so who do they fight? where do you train them? i think the president does have to come to congress for addit
we re not going to do this ourselves. we re going to shore up the terrorist fighting capabilities of our partners. well, that can t happen. we just saw what happened to our partner, the iraqi military, who pretty much collapsed in the face of isis. so the question for the administration is, is there a strategy short of reoccupying iraq that can prevent this islamic state, whatever we re calling it, from becoming a safe haven like afghanistan pre-9/11 for terrorists who can threaten us? and the administration says, well, there are ways to do this. you know, look at somalia or yemen or the territories on the border of pakistan with drones, you know, with intelligence we re able to contain them. it might be a little harder to do that in iraq. and we re seeing poll numbers overall, the president is suffering with regard to public perception of his performance. when we talk about foreign policy, liz, he s hitting all-time lows. is there a chance here for him to come up with a strategy tha