In Kuwait, Def. Sec. Carter meets with brass over Islamic State war strategy.

In Kuwait, Def. Sec. Carter meets with brass over Islamic State war strategy.(stripes).

As Iraqi troops fight to recapture the Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi from the Islamic State, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter met Monday with U.S. troops and high-ranking officials in neighboring Kuwait to discuss the fight against the terrorist group.

Seated around a large T-shaped table for the hours-long, closed-door session were 25 military and diplomatic officials Carter called his “Team America.”

Carter, who stepped into his new job last week, traveled to Camp Arifijan to confer with senior military and diplomatic experts and develop his own assessment of the U.S. war strategy in the region.

There are about 3,000 American troops in Iraq training and advising Iraqi forces and providing force protection. During a troop talk before the big confab, Carter was asked if the cap on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, set at 3,100 by President Barack Obama, should be raised.

“I don’t have a good answer for you right now,” Carter acknowledged, saying “that’s one of the things I want to climb on top of” during the meeting with senior experts.

When asked what it would take for him to recommend sending American ground troops into direct combat with the Islamic State, an option that Obama has so far ruled out, Carter sounded a note of caution.

“We need to be convinced that any use of our forces is necessary, is going to be sufficient, [and] that we’ve thought through not just the first step but the second step and the third step,” he said, “so that we if we do ask you to do something, we’re asking you to do something that is going to succeed and it makes sense and ... it is necessary to take the risk that you’re taking. That’s my responsibility.”Read the full story here.

Related: Aug 2014: "What we’re facing in northern Iraq is only partly a crisis about Iraq. It is about the region and potentially the world as we know it." By Ret. Gen. John Allen.

Make no mistake, the abomination of IS is a clear and present danger to the U.S. The only question really is whether the U.S. and its allies and partners will act decisively now while they can still shape events to destroy IS, an act that seems increasingly self-obvious.

'Leading from behind' while exercising 'strategic patience'