Our collective goal, the goal of the west militarily, should be to diminish the Salifist, Islamist, al-Qaeda threat to the point that the Africans can handle it, and that means diminishing it very significantly. I keep using words like “diminish” rather than “defeat”, because we're not going to defeat them. There's going to be no “mission accomplished” moment. This is an insurgency. This is going to be extremely difficult. Ask the Algerians. The Algerians have been fighting these guys for 20 years, more or less. We ought to be joining in that fight because it affects us and our friends.
There's more we could have done, logistically. There's more equipment we could have provided. I don't think infantry, big numbers of troops, ought to be considered, but I do think we have certain specific skills and we ought to be putting those skills to the task.