Marco Rubio Quotes

We have a duty to fight ISIS; air operations alone will not defeat ISIS.

Many in the U.S. military believe ISIS needs to be immediately, and repeatedly, smashed by American drones and warplanes.

If I had been in President Obama's shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.

On one level, bombing ISIS is easy. The U.S. knows where the group operates. There's no need for a ten-year hunt like the one for Osama bin Laden. The terror group has two capital cities: Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Al-Qaeda never had such an obvious home address.

Quote A: I don’t think we need boots on the ground I don’t think that is an option worth consideration. Quote B: This idea that we’ll never have any boots on the ground to defeat them [ISIS] in Syria is fantasy.

Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State.

Air power will not defeat ISIS. It has not been able to deny ISIS freedom of maneuver and the ability to attack at will.

I think carpet bombing is an absolutely tremendous idea if the enemy accommodates you by laying himself out like a carpet in the middle of the desert without any civilians or infrastructure around him. Sadly, the Islamic State has learned that that is a losing proposition and does not accommodate us in that way.

It's - getting Assad out is not the only priority. And so what we're trying to do is obviously defeat ISIS.

I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.

On military battlefields, we have defeated radical Islamic forces every time we have seriously gone after them, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

In my view, airstrikes without an effective ground force are unlikely to make any meaningful contribution to defeating Isis.

When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power. Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed.

We need to get serious about defeating ISIS; we just aren't serious about it yet. I would be very serious about getting it done. I know how to do it. We need to take the fight to them on the battlefield in a more serious way.

Our mission to defeat ISIS has been slowed down by the need to defend from additional Iranian attacks.

Europe, the U.S., and their allies can defeat the terrorists of Islamic State, or ISIS. The first step is making the decision to fight back. The next step is understanding that drones and standoff missiles will not be enough. Ground troops will be needed.

In my view, it is only when civilians are protected that we will defeat ISIS, and until that is at the centre of our plan, I will remain an outspoken advocate for that cause.

We also have to intensify our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqa, end their claim of being a Caliphate.

This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out Isil wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.

We need a president who stands up, number one, and says, we will defeat ISIS. And number two, says the greatest national security threat facing America is a nuclear Iran.

You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops. You use air power directed - and you have embedded special forces to direction the air power. But the object isn't to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.

Immediately after taking office, I will ask my generals to present to me a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy ISIS.

As far as the command centers are concerned in Raqqa and to a lesser degree Mosul, cut those off. Do the same kind of thing that we did with Sinjar , working with our embedded special forces with the Kurds, shut off the supply route, soften them up, then we go in with specials ops followed by our air force to take them over. Those are things that work.

You bomb ISIL. You're not trying to bomb innocent people. And that requires intelligence and confidence in our military to be able to develop the kinds of targets that we need. We're already doing Special Forces, who are going to help us gather that intelligence and help advise and assist and train local forces so that they can go after ISIL in areas like Raqqah and Mosul.

I would let the military commanders give the commander in chief options rather than tell them what you want to hear. Not having gotten those options, I can't tell you if we are going to have boots on the ground but certainly, a more expanded role for the special operators would be essential. And being more effective in strikes as it is relates to the air.