Cruz: ‘If Need Be, We Should’ Put American Boots on the Ground to Fight ISIS

Senator Ted Cruz said that “if need be, we should” put American boots on the ground to accomplish the mission of destroying the Islamic State.

Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on This Week Sunday, Cruz said that his preferred policy to combat the Islamic State would be to first arm and aggressively support Kurdish Peshmerga forces on the ground in their fight against the terrorist group. Stephanopoulos pushed him on what he would do if that proved to be insufficient: “If that’s not enough, would you be willing to send American ground troops into the battle?”

“Look, we need to accomplish the mission,” Cruz said. “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.”

Cruz blasted the Obama administration’s “consistently wrong” approach to national security. “When it comes to ISIS, our policy of leading from behind, we’ve seen essentially photo-op foreign policy.”