Although the U.S. led coalition's fight against ISIS hasn't been going on for that long, critics are already claiming that we're losing the battle. "They’re winning, and we’re not,” John McCain complained on CNN’s State of the Union about ISIS' advances over the past week. “The Iraqis are not winning. The Peshmerga, the Kurds are not winning,” McCain told host Candy Crowley. Meanwhile on Fox News Sunday, Bob Woodward, Associate Editor of the Washington Post, called the strategy "a mess."
But Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders said that ISIS (or ISIL) is a problem for the entire world, and can't be done exclusively by the U.S. He told CNN's Candy Crowley that our allies in the Middle East assume that in the end, the U.S. will put troops on the ground so they don't have to. But that has to stop.
"The people of America are getting sick and tired of the world and region — Saudi Arabia and the other countries — saying, ‘Hey, we don’t have to do anything about it. The American taxpayer, the American soldiers will do all the work for us."
Sanders said that if the battle was perceived as the United States vs. ISIS then “we’re going to lose that war.”
“This is a war for the soul of Islam, and the Muslim nations must be deeply involved,” he said. “And to the degree the developed countries are involved, it should be the U.K., France, Germany, other countries as well.”
"It is very easy to criticize the president,” Sanders said to critics like Senator McCain. “But this is an enormously complicated issue. We are here today because of the disastrous blunder of the Bush-Cheney era, which got us into this war in Iraq in the first place, which then developed the can of worms that we’re trying to deal with right now.”
“We have been at war for 12 years, we have spent trillions of dollars,” he added. “We have 500,000 men and women who have come home with PTSD and [traumatic brain injuries]. What I do not want, and what I fear very much is the United States getting sucked into a quagmire, and being involved in perpetual warfare year after year after year. That is my fear.”