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First of all, before we do anything, we need to separate politics from military force. The two do not and can not ever go together. The President of the United States (or any country) should not be waging war hoping to improve ratings for himself or his party. That's just plain immoral.
I really think Obama is going to stay the course here. He does not want boots on the ground. The United States has been on the ground in the Middle East since 2001, and he wants us to be done with this.
At the same time, we need to remember that we cannot use a military solution to solve a terrorist problem. Military forces are used to fight other military forces, but terrorism is a criminal act. Our military (including forces from Europe) fought and won in both Afghanistan and Iraq. However, terrorism still exists. If we were to nuke both all of Iraq and all of Syria today, ISIS would still exist. ISIS is not a government or a country in one location; It's in dozens of countries. Sending in troops to Syria or Iraq will not solve the problem of fighting terrorism. It would help, but terrorism will always exist in some form.
With all of that said... I say we need to go in and kick ass and STAY there. I believe in what I call "disproportionate force". You do "x" to us, and will occupy your land and dominate your society for the next one hundred years. This sends a very clear and strong message that says if you so much as attack us once we will own your ass for very long time.
Society has become too "gentle" with waging war. We try to do as little damage as possible. At the close of World War II there was no attempt by Nazi Germany or Japan to continue fighting even passively after surrendering. They accepted defeat. The reason why was because we carpet bombed the hell out of them, destroying entire cities in a single day, killing hundreds of thousands of people - daily. Nazi Germany and Japan was physically exhausted. With Afghanistan and Iraq we used precision bombing and instead of destroying entire cities we did as little damage as possible. The end result is instead of them being exhausted and disgusted with waging war, they are upset at their government. Instead of saying "War is absolutely horrible and we need to do everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again" they say "I am unhappy because I am unable to get a job and feed my family so I will resist by committing acts of terror such as planting IEDs".
Until the entire majority of the Middle Eastern people accept that radical religion needs to be stamped this will continue.
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