Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer has called on President Barack Obama to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria with American air power.
On Fox News’s "The O’Reilly Factor," he told host Bill O’Reilly that drone attacks will not help to purge thousands of jihadist terrorists from huge swaths of land in the war-torn countries.
"Drones are useless," said the Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for The Washington Post. "A drone is terrific if you want to take out a single terrorist in a coffee shop somewhere in northern Pakistan.
"But here you need heavy air power to knock out these convoys and to hit these staging areas, which we can do," said Krauthammer, referring to the zones where ISIS mounts its attacks across the embattled region.
"We cannot honor the border between Iraq and Syria. It no longer exists in the real world. We have to go into Syria to attack ISIS, or all of this is useless. They are going to have their safe havens."
Krauthammer also said the United States should not expect the Kurds in northern Iraq to help the United States battle the violent, masked thugs of the al-Qaida-affiliated terror group.
"The Kurds are of no use to us. They captured Kirkuk. They have their own state. They have been longing for that for 100 years since the Versailles conference, and they have it in reach. They are not going to want to get involved in this war."
The columnist criticized Obama for pulling out all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, leaving the field wide open for a terrorist insurgency. And he said that now Obama must act "quickly" to put troops back on the ground.
"He has to do what he declined to do in 2011, which is to leave behind a small residual force that could gather intelligence, help to direct planning on tactics, and carry out air support."
Krauthammer, who is also a Fox News analyst, also agreed with former Vice President Dick Cheney that the Obama administration has been "dithering" over Iraq while ISIS has taken control of major Iraqi cities.
"Well, he has dithered since the day he got into office," Krauthammer said. "It took him a year to decide on the surge in Afghanistan. It went yes, then no, then maybe. In between that he announces a surge in the same sentence he announces a withdrawal. He is unsure."
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