The Florida senator and potential Republican presidential candidate supports President Barack Obama's strategy to arm moderate Syrian rebels battling the militants — and says American combat troops may be necessary to stop the march of Islamic State forces across the Middle East. The tough talk about fighting Islamic State extremists also could quell concerns among a broader swath of Republicans about the 43-year-old freshman senator's inexperience in global affairs — seen as a key vulnerability if Democrats nominate former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. "Most Americans are not only war-weary but very wary of being left with a hostile situation and really no civil government that's there on the ground," said Richard Lugar, the former Republican senator from Indiana who led the Foreign Relations Committee. In an opinion piece aimed as much at his potential GOP rivals as Obama, Rubio took to the pages of The Washington Post last week to criticize the president for what he characterized as "the most disengaged presidential foreign policy in modern American history." For now, with recent polls showing majorities of Americans in both major political parties supporting plans for a military campaign against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, some GOP critics have begun to echo Rubio and other hawks in the party.