American boots on the ground.
That was the call from Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham on Monday as they pushed for President Barack Obama to send U.S. forces to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
“The surge worked, we had it under control,” McCain told Chris Cuomo during an interview on CNN’s “New Day” in a joint appearance with Graham.
“Call in those people that are really the most respected in America and the world,” he added, naming former Gen. David Petraeus as one. “They’ll give him a strategy.”
“As tragic as this is,” McCain said, “it’s certainly predictable if you look at the decisions made by this president.”
Graham, who predicted on Sunday that “another 9/11” was coming if the U.S. didn’t act militarily, echoed McCain’s call for American forces on the ground in Syria.
Calling the ISIS threat “a generational struggle,” Graham made the case for bringing the frontline to Syria.
“You have to go in on the ground and hit them there,” the Republican presidential candidate told Cuomo. “I’m looking for an away game when it comes to ISIL, not a home game. I want to fight them in their backyard.”
He suggested a force of 100,000 troops from a broad coalition of nations, “of which we’ll be 10%.”
Both McCain and Graham questioned the usefulness of slowing down or cutting off the flow of Syrian refugees into the U.S., with McCain calling the refugee issue “a symptom of failure, not a cause of failure.”