Kurdish forces regain control of large sections of Iraq.

Perry also faulted Obama for not providing arms to Syrian rebels battling forces loyal to President Bashar Assad early on in the three-year-old civil war. He derided Obama's insistence that "Assad must go" as "an opinion, not a policy."

In adopting a hawkish stance, Perry is staking a position that many in the Republican Party have moved away from after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a reflection of a war-weary nation. His call for greater American involvement in Iraq and regrets about Syria also puts him at odds with possible presidential rival Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and number of other GOP conservatives.

Perry's openness to combat forces places him to the right of Sen. John McCain,R-Ariz., one of the loudest critics of Obama's policies and a fierce defense hawk who opposes any "significant" deployment of boots on the ground.

Perry acknowledged the mistake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by his predecessor — President George W. Bush — and spoke of the politically driven decision to withdraw U.S. forces in 2011. He said Republicans and Democrats should not be hemmed in by history in fighting the Islamic state militants.

Perry came to Washington to deliver a speech that Heritage billed as a discussion of immigration, but the governor, who has tangled with the administration on U.S. border security policy, devoted much of his talk to national security.

His appearance came a week after he was indicted by a grand jury in Austin on charges stemming from