have to commit additional resources to this effort. we ve got to have we ve got to speed up our air strikes. air strikes are great, we re hitting some targets, but air strikes alone are not going to win here. what isis has achieved is the ability to gain territory. and it s that territory, it s the caliphate where they re designing their ability to kind of now do outreach and attack other countries. we ve got to take that territory away from them. the it s been a year. they re still mosul. they re still in ramadi. they re still in raqqah. those are the areas we have to go after in order to be able to defeat isis ultimately. we ve got to take the territory back and we ve got to make sure that other countries are part of the effort to try to deal with isis. all of those steps need to be taken. on that specific front, actually, on territory, helene, you had a specific question on that front. i do. but i m also curious, mr.
are there legitimate reasons to slow the process or is this just islamophobia? joining me for insight and analysis are tom brokaw of nbc news, kathleen parker of the washington post, colleen cooper of the new york times and ron fornier of the national journal. welcome to sunday and a special edition of meet the press. good sunday morning. the belgian capital, brussels, remains in lockdown with soldiers on the streets amid fears of an imminent isis attack. police in that city are also searching door to door for one of the paris attackers who is believed to be hiding somewhere in the brussels area. meanwhile, overnight in malaysia president obama struck a different tone than he did earlier this week and he addressed americans fears about terror specifically. the most powerful tool we have to fight isil is to say
no war can be won without a plan. but what s worse, there are rivalries over the future of the land isis currently occupies, especially in the middle east. saudi arabia and many of the united states other allies don t like the islamic state but its destruction is not their top priority, it s third or fourth down the list. turkey, for example, is more worried about the kurds establishing their own state. saudi arabia is more worried about iran and so on down the list. there are very few countries who share the united states desire to destroy the islamic state as a first order priority. reporter: many are wondering whether what happened in paris will be enough to shock the world into finding some sort of consensus, or will it take yet another terrorist massacre to do that? and isis is now threatening attacks in the united states. richard edge untngel in turk. thank you very much.
i m now joined by leon panetta. he served as secretary of defense and director of the cia under president obama. secretary panetta, nice to see you, sir. let me ask with a very simple question is the president s current strategy against isis working? well, obviously there s a lot of concern about whether or not we ve deployed the resources to be able to accomplish the mission that the president described. i think the mission that he said is the right mission, which is to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy isis. that s the right mission. but i think that the resources applied to that mission, frankly, have not been sufficient to confront that. and for that reason we have to be muffin moch more aggressive unified to take on isis. in politico, one of the former counterterrorism advisors to president obama and president bush wrote this by any measure
science and we ll invite anybody in that wants to be part of that communication and, frankly, i am proud to see so many moderate muslims beganing to stand up and condemn the attacks in paris and say their religion has been hijacked. so i think it s very important that we all come to grips with the fact that we ve got to communicate who we are and while we believe in life, they believe that death somehow gets them paradise. not any new agency, not anything about going to church, about who we are as the west that represents freedom and life and progress. that s what we need to communicate to the world. now, one of the criticisms, though, of making this about the west versus isis is you re leaving out a lot of people that would like to live in the middle east as muslims. that s not true, chuck. and it becomes a clash of civilizations, this idea that it s about a war against civilizations. chuck, read bernard lewis. he will tell you there was a time when islam did represent