The U.S. and its allies can and should initiate a truly serious campaign against ISIS by providing more weapons to Iraq's Kurds, increasing material support for Jordan, and making it clear to regional actors that if they provide tacit support to ISIS there will be a price.

This will further require a much more fully resourced effort to train, advise and assist Iraqi government forces. The U.S. ground component will need to be considerably enhanced - not on the scale of previous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at least sufficient to back up Special Operations. Larger ground raids and assaults against ISIS will sometimes be appropriate. The CIA and other American intelligence capabilities should certainly be unleashed.

U.S. airstrikes could also be considerably more devastating, to pin ISIS down, disrupt its supplies, and keep it off balance. The administration likes to tout the number of air sorties conducted thus far against the Islamic State. These numbers appear intended mainly to impress people who do not really know what an air sortie is. In truth, the U.S. air campaign against ISIS has operated under excessive, unnecessary, and sometimes even absurd restrictions, insisted upon by the White House. U.S. Special Operations forces need to be empowered to call in American airpower against ISIS. They need to be able to operate on the front line in combat, to maximize their effect. If Canada can do this—and it is—then so can the United States.

Altogether, the U.S. and its allies need to bring overwhelming force to bear at key locations to literally destroy the forces of ISIS. We should fully expect the Islamic State to utilize every diabolical tactic it possesses, including terrorism and civilian human shields, to try to frustrate the U.S. and its allies. ISIS’ forces will use irregular tactics from the very beginning, and increasingly so as they are set back and displaced.

The operation will be complicated and protracted. But throughout its long history, the United States has never avoided difficult military operations simply by refusing to plan for them. Let's listen to the professional military, and get this right for once. This is a mission that our national security demands, it is what our military is trained to do – what is lacking is the authority to complete the mission. The shadow of Iraq is not grounds for ceding swaths of territory to ISIS, nor should we delude ourselves into believing that deploying brigade combat teams translates into a military occupation. Such cloudy and specious reasoning is dangerous.

The current administration, powered by liberal assumptions, believes such a robust response to be irrational. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf encapsulated Obama's own thinking last month when she said: "we need...to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups," "we need to find them jobs," and "we cannot win this war by killing them."

Actually Marie, we can, and we will. A devastating response toward ISIS would be the opposite of irrational. Because one of the most demoralizing things for any army—and ISIS is among other things an army—is to die in large numbers. War means combat, and combat means killing. If you don't like it, then don't go to war. By its own choice, ISIS is at war with the United States. Every sensible person understands that an effective campaign against this terror state will require more than just destruction. But let's not kid ourselves: for these sadistic brutes to be set back, demoralized, and defeated, they are going to have to be physically dismantled.

The clear implication of all this is that any congressional authorization for the use of force should not hobble or undermine the U.S. military's ability to actually implement President Obama's own stated goal of degrading and destroying ISIS. Obama seems addicted to such crippling restrictions, as we have already seen in Afghanistan, but they really make no sense.

In particular, tight restrictions on the timeframe or ground component of any use of force only signal weakness to ISIS as well as to American allies. Such overly political restrictions hinder the U.S. military's ability to execute the stated strategy and to adapt as the enemy does. Congressional Republicans should indeed support a use of force authorization against ISIS, and the public expects as much. But congressional Republicans should also insist on an authorization without self-defeating restrictions on American ground forces or timeframe. A clean, strong authorization will help to hold this president accountable, indicate Republican seriousness, move the policy in the right direction, and mobilize bipartisan support for the effort that lies ahead.

If the policy merits weren't enough, it should be obvious by now there is no major downside to a strong use of force authorization for Republicans as a party. According to the same Quinnipiac poll mentioned earlier, 60 percent of independent voters, over half the Democratic Party, and fully 73 percent of Republicans now support the use of American ground troops against ISIS. This is a dramatic change from last autumn. The GOP's anti-interventionist faction has been seriously set back on this issue. Mainstream Republican conservatives are not only open to a more aggressive use of force against ISIS—they are virtually demanding it. And they are right to do so.

Because the general public is not foolish, it also recognizes that the U.S. effort against ISIS will be neither simple, nor quick, nor easy. But the American people are making their minds up about ISIS, and however reluctant Obama's own reaction, that irresistible public pressure now weighs increasingly in the same direction as conservative conviction, allied requirements, justified outrage, and the sheer strategic necessity of the situation.

And what they all say is: ISIS must be destroyed.

Colin Dueck is an associate professor at George Mason University and the author of The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today (Oxford, 2015). Roger Zakheim is an attorney, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former deputy staff director and general counsel on the House Armed Services committee; follow him on Twitter@Rogerreuv.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class John Philip Wagner Jr