Getting Middle Eastern Boots on the Ground Against ISIS

Syrian tanks are positioned near the Jazel oil field, near the ancient city of Palmyra, after they retook the area from ISIS fighters on March 9, 2015. Palmyra has since fallen to ISIS.

Presidential candidates from both parties seem to agree there’s a need for Sunni Arab participation on the ground in the fight against ISIS.

But Steve Clemons, Washington editor at large for The Atlantic and editor of Atlantic Live, argues the Saudis, Bahrainis, and others are in fact fighting ISIS; they're just not following the Western strategy.

And Rami Khouri, a Jordanian-Palestinian national, senior public policy fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, says the Western "whack-a-mole" policy of putting boots on the ground wouldn't solve the heart of the problem: poverty, fear, and desperation in Arab states which breeds allegiance to groups like ISIS.