Let me provide a firsthand illustration.

A week ago, I appeared on a network television news program to discuss American policy in Iraq and in particular the challenges posed by ISIS. The other guests were former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and current CEO of a Washington think tank Michelle Flournoy, and retired four-star Gen. Anthony Zinni who had once headed up United States Central Command.

Washington is a city in which whatever happens within the current news cycle trumps all other considerations, whether in the immediate or distant past. So the moderator launched the discussion by asking the panelists to comment on President Obama’s decision, announced earlier that very day, to plus-up the 3,000-strong train-and-equip mission to Iraq with an additional 450 American soldiers, the latest ratcheting up of ongoing U.S. efforts to deal with ISIS.

Panetta spoke first and professed wholehearted approval of the initiative. “Well, there’s no question that I think the president’s taken the right step in adding these trainers and advisers.” More such steps — funneling arms to Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis and deploying U.S. Special Operations Forces to hunt down terrorists — were “going to be necessary in order to be able to achieve the mission that we have embarked on.”

That mission was of critical importance. Unless defeated, ISIS would convert Iraq into “a base [for] attacking our country and attacking our homeland.”

Flournoy expressed a similar opinion. She called the decision to send additional trainers “a good move and a smart move,” although she, too, hoped that it was only the “first step in a broader series” of escalatory actions.

If anything, her view of ISIS was more dire than that of her former Pentagon boss. She called it “the new jihad — violent jihadist vanguard in the Middle East and globally.” Unless stopped, ISIS was likely to become “a global network” with “transnational objectives,” while its “thousands of foreign fighters” from the West and Gulf states were eventually going to “return and be looking to carry out jihad in their home countries.”

Gen. Zinni begged to differ — not on the nature of the danger confronting Washington, but on what to do about it. He described the present policy as “almost déjà vu,” a throwback “to Vietnam before we committed the ground forces. We dribble in more and more advisers and support.”

“We’re not fully committed to this fight,” the general complained. “We use terms like destroy. I can tell you, you could put ground forces on the ground now and we can destroy ISIS.” Zinni proposed doing just that. No more shilly-shallying. The template for action was readily at hand.

“The last victory, clear victory that we had was in the first Gulf War,” he said. And what were the keys to success then? “We used overwhelming force. We ended it quickly. We went to the U.N. and got a resolution. We built a coalition. And that ought to be a model we ought to look at.”

In short, go big, go hard, go home.

Panetta disagreed. He had a different template in mind. The Iraq War of 2003–2011 had clearly shown that “we know how to do this, and we know how to win at doing this.” The real key was to allow America’s generals a free hand to do what needed to be done.

“[A]ll we really do need to do is to be able to give our military commanders the flexibility to design not only the strategy to degrade ISIS, but the larger strategy we need in order to defeat ISIS.” Unleashing the likes of Delta Force or SEAL Team 6 with some missile-firing drones thrown in for good measure was likely to suffice.

For her part, Flournoy thought the real problem was “making sure that there is Iraqi capacity to hold the territory, secure it long-term, so that ISIS doesn’t come back again. And that involves the larger political compromises” — the ones the Iraqis themselves needed to make. At the end of the day, the solution was an Iraqi army willing and able to fight and an Iraqi government willing and able to govern effectively. On that score, there was much work to be done.

Panetta then pointed out that none of this was in the cards unless the United States stepped up to meet the challenge. “[I]f the United States doesn’t provide leadership in these crises, nobody else will.”

That much was patently obvious. Other countries and the Iraqis themselves might pitch in, “but we have to provide that leadership. We can’t just stand on the sidelines wringing our hands. I mean … ask the people of Paris what happened there with ISIS. Ask the people in Brussels what happened there with ISIS. What happened in Toronto? What’s happened in this country as a result of the threat from ISIS?”

Ultimately, everything turned on the willingness of America to bring order and stability out of chaos and confusion. Only the United States possessed the necessary combination of wisdom, competence, and strength. Here was a proposition to which Flournoy and Zinni readily assented.