This is the Cano Daily Podcast for Monday, April 25th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President says he will send 250 members of the military to assist in the fight against ISIS in Syria.

Is that anything more than a gesture?

Chris Pravell Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute comments.

Well, the goal, of course, is to end the Syrian Civil War and deal a decisive blow to ISIS.

It's hard to believe, it's hard for me to believe

that 250 individuals will be the critical increment

of American power that makes both of those or either of those things

happen.

And in fairness I think, I don't think President Obama believes that either.

But I think it's interesting that for someone who has,

I think, a healthy skepticism of the efficacy of military power and especially large numbers of U.S. troops in places like Iraq and Syria.

He seems to have an extraordinary amount of faith in the ability of very small numbers of troops to do what large

number of troops can't do.

And again, in fairness, they're doing different things. They are, it is supporting fighters on the

ground as opposed to doing the fighting themselves, a critical distinction but I think where I don't share the president's

apparent confidence in the effectiveness of this is that I think the problems that these

individuals are trying to solve are far more deep-seated than can be addressed by

a few well-intentioned truly a few, just a handful of well intentioned American

soldiers trying to convince them that the most important thing that these other fighters should

do is fight ISIS. The problem, of course, is people in the region don't all agree that ISIS is the number one problem.

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