On Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press,” Jeb Bush said that it was time for the United States to go to war with ISIS, and to put together an international coalition to rout the jihadis from their strongholds in Syria and Iraq. “We should declare war and harness all of the power that the United States can bring to bear, both diplomatic and military of course, to be able to take out ISIS,” Bush, who is trailing badly in the G.O.P. Presidential polls, said. “We have the capabilities of doing this, we just haven’t shown the will.”

Pressed by Chuck Todd, the show’s moderator, on what else Bush wanted President Obama to do, the former Florida governor talked about creating no-fly and safe zones in Syria, “directly” arming Kurdish peshmerga forces, and embedding U.S. personnel in the Iraqi military. When Todd asked Bush what he would tell the American people to justify such a strategy, he said, “We have to be in this fight. There is no other option.” Later, Todd inquired whether such a plan would involve “boots on the ground.” “Absolutely,” Bush replied. “And it ought to be designed by our military without their hands tied.”

There is much that could be said about Bush’s proposal, which he said would include efforts to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and, if necessary, to confront his military forces, too. (“We need to build a coalition that can fight both Assad and ISIS and give people safe haven,” he said.) I was struck, in particular, by how he foresaw that such a military campaign would be sequenced. “Well, you take it to them in Syria and Iraq,” Bush explained. “You destroy ISIS. And then you build a coalition to replace this radical Islamic terrorist threat to our country and to Europe and to the region with something that is more peace loving.”

Notice the “And then.” You go in militarily; you knock off the local regime and take out its forces, at which point—not before you send in the military—you figure out how to keep the peace. In other words, you—that is, we—do precisely what the United States and its allies did in Iraq and Afghanistan under the leadership of Jeb’s brother George W.

Was this just another example of Jeb mangling his words? Apparently not.

On Monday morning, he appeared on MSNBC, where he was asked about the so-called Powell doctrine, which says that the United States military should only intervene abroad with overwhelming force, and when the mission and exit strategy are clear. “The Powell doctrine applies here. It definitely applies here,” Bush replied. “You do this in unison with the rest of the world. You do it with massive force. You do it with the stated objective of total victory.”

Bush went on: “And then_”_—my emphasis added—“you need to forge political consensus to create a stable Syria and a stable Iraq. Then we leave. That is the proper way to look at this.”

Who could doubt it?