Republican candidates have decided to use the recent setbacks against ISIS as a winning issue in the 2016 election, and it seems to be working. A poll from October shows a majority of people believe that Republicans can handle the threat of ISIS better than Democrats.
But what exactly is the GOP strategy for Iraq?

To go on what Gerson calls the “strategic offensive” against threats such as the Islamic State, he says the United States should work to make allies and partners stronger and rely on unique U.S. military capabilities such as air power, Special Operations forces and intelligence. It should invest in training partners and use tools such as development assistance and economic support. And Washington must do this multilaterally and show the world that it is a “reliable partner.”
All of that accurately describes Obama’s approach. Today the U.S. military has as many as 3,000 troops in Iraq helping to train security forces and more than 35,000 military personnel in the Persian Gulf to reassure and work with our partners. For nearly a year, U.S. warplanes have bombed targets every day in Iraq and Syria — nearly 3,000 airstrikes so far — and Special Operations forces engage against terrorist targets, as last weekend’s raid into Syria proved. In the past few weeks, Washington has begun military training of the Syrian opposition at a cost of $500­ million. And the United States is partnering with other countries; today European allies are contributing to the Iraqi air campaign and training mission, and Arab states (and Canada) are part of the strikes in Syria.

For instance, Rick Santorum recently said, “They want to bring back a 7th-century version of jihad. So here’s my suggestion: We load up our bombers, and we bomb them back to the 7th century.”
Has he not noticed that we've been bombing them since August?

Marco Rubio decided that Liam Neeson should design our foreign policy. "Liam Neeson. He had a line, and this is what our strategy should be: ‘We will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you.'”
Who are you going to quote next? Schwarzenegger? Rambo?

In fact, the only thing that Obama hasn't done in Iraq that GOP presidential candidates have called for is putting tens of thousands of soldiers on the ground in what would be our third invasion of Iraq.
Only George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, and Rick Perry have gone there, and only in numbers hardly much more than what Obama already has in Iraq.

Let's say for a moment that we put 10,000 soldiers in Iraq to directly battle ISIS, like Graham wants.
ISIS has 16,000 jihadists, all of them ready to die.

The contingent of foreigners who have taken up arms on behalf of Islamic State during the past 3 1/2 years is more than twice as big as the French Foreign Legion. The conflict in Syria and Iraq has now drawn more volunteer fighters than past Islamist causes in Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia — and an estimated eight out of 10 enlistees have joined Islamic State.

What's more, this is a different kind of enemy. It's hard enough to defend against IEDs.
It's even harder to stop an armored Humvee, fully loaded with explosives and driven by someone expecting to die, before it gets close.

The State Department is sharing new details about the deadly fighting in Ramadi, Iraq, last Sunday, saying the city fell into ISIS hands after the militant group set off 30 suicide car bombs in the city center, 10 of which each were comparable in power to the Oklahoma City truck bomb of 1995.
The explosions took out “entire city blocks,” said a senior State Department official who spoke to reporters at the State Department Wednesday on condition that he not be named.

So what it really comes down to is that the Republicans are quick to criticize, point fingers, and talk tough, but have absolutely no clue about what to do to salvage this disaster that President Bush got us into, and President Obama was foolish enough to try.

That being said, our current strategy in Iraq is badly flawed for countless reasons. Just to name a few:

* Airstrikes alone will not defeat ISIS. Even Secretary of State John Kerry has said as much.

*Our primary ally in this fight are Shia militias, the very same ones who killed hundreds of American soldiers just a few years ago, and are currently engaged in ethnic cleansing and war crimes. ISIS can't be defeated without the militias, the militias are too big to ignore, and they are out of control.

*While our strategy to defeat ISIS in Iraq is shaky, our strategy to defeat ISIS in Syria is an ill-defined and nearly hopeless plan that is in fact just another attempt at the same plan that has already failed before. Our Syria strategy looks like nothing but a political cover so that someone can say that are "doing something".
Without a real plan to defeat ISIS in Syria, the war in Iraq cannot end.

*President Obama once promised to "continue to shrink ISIL's sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem."
It is by this statement that our war strategy is a measurable failure.
ISIS recently took over Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte in Libya. ISIS moved into Libya last October and then kept expanding. Despite this, NATO has no plans to attack them in Libya.
President Obama has vowed that there will be "no safe haven" for ISIS, yet won't do anything to disrupt their safe haven in Libya. In fact, the White House (and NATO) seems to not even want to acknowledge they exist in Libya.
What is bizarre is that Republicans won't acknowledge ISIS in Libya either. It's almost as if we are talking about the Emperor's New Clothes. What makes it even more bizarre is the Republican obsession with the minor Benghazi incident of 2012, but oblivious to the ISIS havens practically next door.
The bottom line is that as long as ISIS has a safe haven, whether we acknowledge it or not, then they can't be defeated. And since neither political party will acknowledge their safe haven in Libya, and the lack of a realistic plan for Syria, neither party has a strategy that can win this war.