Sen. Joni Ernst Calls for 'Complete Honesty' From Obama on ISIS

The strategy that President Barack Obama "might or might not have" against the Islamic State is not working, Sen. Joni Ernst said Thursday, and the United States needs to be more serious about what it's doing in the Middle East.

"It can't just be American troops," the Iowa Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "We need to develop a great coalition and take this into the Middle East and I think we can do that, but we have to have a leader here in the United States that says we're going to destroy ISIS, not contain it, not degrade it, but destroy it."

But air strikes won't work alone, said Ernst, who commanded the 1168th Transportation Company of the Iowa National Guard in Iraq and Kuwait in 2003 and 2004, as "historically, airstrikes on their own will not win a war." Further, she said, someone needs to be on the ground to manage those airstrikes.

Meanwhile, there has been difficulty in maintaining support for a strong coalition to go after ISIS, and Ernst on Thursday blamed Obama for that.

"The reason we are not building a coalition is because we have a president that hasn't admitted we need to build a coalition and actually after go after ISIS," she said. "If we had a leader that would step up and say this is a problem, we have innocents around the world that are being killed. we need to do something about it."

Ernst said she wants to hear "complete honesty" on Obama's strategy, as "his wayward way of doing things in the Middle East is not working. We are not destroying ISIS."

She also wants Obama to reach out to his Joint Chiefs of staff on the issue and listen to what they have to say on the fight.

And if Russia wants to engage ISIS, Ernst said she thinks the United States should consider it, but "it needs to be made quite clear what they can and cannot do" in the fight and what intelligence will be shared or not shared with Russia.

"I think we need to move with caution any time that we are discussing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Russia," she said.

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