Sen. Ted Cruz appeared on ABC's This Week to discuss the president's battle plan against the Islamic State in Iraq & Syria. He tells George Stephanopoulos that the Kurds of Northern Iraq are "our close allies," who can be our "boots on the ground" while we support them with "serious, overwhelming air power."
STEPHANOPOULOS: I know you've also discussed the battle against ISIS this weekend in Munich. And I know you said in the past that the answer is to bomb ISIS back to the Stone Age.
Most experts say that will not be enough, that you will need ground forces as well.
Would you call up American forces if others don't step up?
CRUZ: You know, I don't believe, right now, we need American boots on the ground, and the reason is we have boots on the ground already with the Kurds. The Peshmerga are trained, effective fighters. They are close allies of us.
Just today, I met with the president of Kurdistan. And he made clear that the Peshmerga are ready to fight. They are fighting ISIS.
But I'll tell you, George, it makes no sense. Our government is not providing military weapons effectively to the Kurds. Instead, they're shuttling it all to Baghdad, and Baghdad is very slow in getting it to the Kurds.
We need to arm the Kurds and we need to use the Peshmerga as boots on the ground. They're effective. They're ready. They're our close allies.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But if that's not enough, would you be willing to send American ground troops into that battle?
CRUZ: Look, we need to accomplish the mission and the mission should be defeating ISIS before they succeed in carrying out more horrific acts of terror, before they succeed in murdering Americans. If need be, we should go that step.
But it should be driven by the mission. And the first step should be to effectively arm the Peshmerga, use them as boots on the ground, and to use serious, overwhelming air power.
The problem is, right now, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy has been consistently wrong. It's been wrong on ISIS. It's been wrong on Russia. It's been wrong on Iran.
And when it comes to ISIS, our policy of leading from behind, we've seen essentially photo-op foreign policy, where we drop a bomb here or a missile there.
We need a focused, direct military objective of taking out and destroying ISIS.
