The battle in the Middle East has done everything but slow down.

President Obama’s response to ISIS may be more alarming than the crisis itself. Over the last few months, President Obama has given the OK to run airstrike after airstrike over Syria. These airstrikes have done little to nothing in aiding Syrian and Iraqi forces.

“You have to have a good government in Baghdad,” said former chairman Joint Chief of Staff Richard Meyers in an interview with Fox News. Later, Meyers adds he believes the airstrikes are working, but need to be followed up with properly-led Iraqi troops. 

The lack of sufficient ground troops in Iraq can’t help the current situation. If we can’t provide Iraq with the proper leadership they need, we must take it upon ourselves to extinguish ISIS before the conflict becomes much bigger. One of the Kurdish fighters in the YPG tells CNN it’s nearly impossible to maintain their current position if the situation does not change immediately.

This calls into question the leadership of President Obama.

When he was first running for office, he promised that he would clean up the mess left by President Bush. He told voters he would end the war on terror. Apparently, pulling troops out of Iraq was a sufficient ending for him.

For the past 20 years, there have been U.S. forces in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Pulling troops out will not solve anything if we do not leave the war-torn countries better than we found them.

President Obama seems to be consumed with making the same decisions President Bush made before him. But, ignoring conflict in the countries we just finished attempting to liberate makes it seem like Bush’s war on terror was a waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong; pulling U.S. forces out of the Middle East was great for our country. We wanted our soldiers out of harm’s way. Now another threat has emerged and is publicly disgracing our country by burning flags and killing innocent Americans. We must launch counter attacks and move in to help defend what we fought for. President Obama needs to face the fact that pulling troops out of Iraq and not having a plan to send in troops later on was a mistake. Just because we left doesn’t mean the threat has been neutralized, it means we’re content with where the country stands.

President Obama’s pledge was to keep innocent Americans safe from war. Now that ISIS has declared war upon the U.S., nothing is stopping a potential terrorist strike on American soil.

I get it. We don’t want to be perceived as the country that “casts the first stone,” but we must act now in order to put a stop to a threat like ISIS. It’s our duty to cut them down before they kill more civilians. “They’re winning, and we’re not,” were the words of Arizona Sen. John McCain in an interview with CNN. He closes the interview by saying, “The Iraqis are not winning… the Kurds are not winning.”

As ISIS militants continue to run rampant throughout Syria and Iraq, our simple airstrikes are not doing enough to hold them back. President Obama’s plan of sending strategic aides to help the Iraqi front line will not be enough to put an end to the thousands of armed ISIS fighters.

I’m not in favor of another war. Many other American’s may not be as well. But, in order to protect our country from harm, the trained U.S. military needs to be inserted back into the Middle East to establish security and stability for both Iraq and Syria.