“Put together a force of 6,000 or 7,000 airborne soldiers and just take Raqqa"

Thus a CIA veteran with long experience hunting Osama bin Laden and trying to outmaneuver ISIS, speaking privately, tells The Daily Beast, “Everybody is going to respond to this thing with solidarity, tying little ribbons on trees and that sort of bullshit,” when what’s needed, in his opinion, is “to drive a stake in their heart.”

How would you do that?

“Put together a force of 6,000 or 7,000 airborne soldiers and just take Raqqa. Don’t issue warnings. Don’t assemble tank columns. Train the force, then use it,” said this gentleman, a veteran of the clandestine services, but not of the military. “They have made Raqqa the capital of their state. Take it and you have changed the ground immediately. You can’t fight ISIS with baby steps, and what happened in Paris gives you the immediate rationale to do something strategic. Otherwise? They are winning.”

U.S. politicians are also hinting at the idea of boots on the ground against ISIS—Sen. Diane Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a statement on Saturday that noted, “The fight is quickly spreading outside Iraq and Syria, and that’s why we must take the battle to them.”