Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani Rudy GiulianiDemocrats fear Russia interference could spoil bid to retake Senate Grand jury adds additional counts against Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and and Igor Fruman Juan Williams: Breaking down the debates MORE on Sunday reiterated his call for ground forces to be deployed to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), blasting President Obama for being too cautious in the fight against the terrorist group.

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During a radio interview with John Catsimatidis Sunday, Giuliani said he’s confident in the military’s ability to defeat ISIS but that it will require using all of the tools it has at its disposal.

“It will have to require, yes, boots on the ground, which the president is constantly saying he never wants to do,” he said. “Well maybe we’re going to lose more lives if we don’t put boots on the ground — in fact, we will. These people see our weakness and they’re taking advantage of it.”

He called the president’s use of timetables for withdrawing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan “an admission of defeat,” saying that they would not have made sense during World War II and the Civil War.

“I think they’re emboldened now by Obama’s lack of real response, his worry about killing civilians,” Giuliani added of ISIS. “I don’t want to kill civilians, you don’t want to kill civilians, but if these people are using civilians as shields, which they’re doing, we’ve got to take them out.”

The former mayor drew parallels between the operation against ISIS and Harry Truman’s use of nuclear weapons in World War II.

“You know Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that killed all civilians, but it saved a million American lives,” he said.

Giuliani added later: “So an American president has to think like that. He’s got to think for America, that’s who he has to protect first, then everybody else.”