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Relying exclusively on air power has limits: planes are effective against fixed strategic targets, like petroleum storage, bridges, and command bunkers; but even then, air power rarely succeeds by itself in destroying a regime's ability to command and control its forces.

You cannot defeat Islamic State with airstrikes only. It's necessary to cooperate with ground troops, and the Syrian army is the most efficient and powerful ground force to fight the Islamic State.

We have to defeat ISIS. We have to make certain that we destroy them and that we push them back.

Any time you have someone's first-hand account of the sheer terror that ISIS can provoke... that's powerful.

This policy of containment is not a winning strategy. We need a policy to defeat and destroy ISIS once and for all.

We have to face the fact that ISIS and its army of like-minded jihadists are determined to win that war and believe they are on the path to victory. They may well be right.

To ISIS and others: We will defeat you.

If your goal is to destroy ISIS, there needs to be a ground force. It could be American or foreign.

If the Islamic State is losing, if they are defeated in Iraq and Syria, or in Libya, which is maybe their most dangerous and most well-developed cell today, then they won't inspire nearly so many attacks.

Nothing is more powerful than hearing from former members of the group that ISIS is not creating an Islamist utopia in the areas it controls, but a hell on earth.