Hillary Clinton said the United States will not put troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria if she becomes president, but insisted that she is committed to defeating the Islamic State.

"We have to defeat ISIS, that is my highest counter-terrorism goal, and we've got to do it with air power," Clinton said. "We've got to do it with much more support for the Arabs and the Kurds."

She continued, "They are not going to get ground troops. We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we're not putting ground troops into Syria. We're going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops."

Clinton's pledge to defeat the Islamic State without troops on the ground is a departure from President Obama's actions earlier this year. Obama committed additional troops to Iraq in the spring, as Fox News reported, raising questions of how boots on the ground in the country are being defined.

The presidential candidates' proposals to defeat the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations will likely become a top issue in the final sixty days of the 2016 campaign.