Hillary Clinton: U.S. Needs to Broaden and Intensify Effort Against ISIS

“We must use every pillar of American power, including our values, to fight terror”.

“It’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate”, the former secretary of state said in a major foreign policy speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in NY. The president is not willing to commit USA forces, so he embraces a minimalist strategy against ISIS. Other Democratic nominees have been hesitant to stray from what President Obama is already doing in Syria.

Obama has deployed more than 3,000 USA troops to Iraq to assist in security and is dispatching 50 special operations forces to Syria.

“I believe the no-fly zone is merited and can be implemented”, she said.

She said Qatar and Saudi Arabia “need to stop their citizens from directly funding extremist organizations”. She does, however, favor imposing a no-fly zone on Syria to protect US allies from both ISIS and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The entire world must be part of this fight, but we must lead it”, Clinton said. We make it easy for them to flag content for us, and they do. “In the end, it didn’t matter what kind of terrorist we called bin Laden, it mattered that we killed bin Laden”.

We can’t refuse Syrians fleeing ISIS because “that is just not who we are”, Clinton said, stealing one of Obama’s all-purpose catchphrases.

Clinton, using a teleprompter, also called for stronger intelligence-gathering capabilities – saying US tech companies have a role to play. (Knowing McCain and Graham, that wouldn’t take long.) On the other hand, it’s awfully hard to imagine Americans supporting another massive military deployment in the Middle East so soon after Iraq under any circumstances apart from a WMD attack inside the U.S. So why is Hillary zeroed in on that 100,000 number? However, Cohn argued, “when Clinton and her aides talk about the Sanders agenda, they always leave out a few critical context”.

Asked about her hefty Wall Street-backed speaking fees and donations, Clinton defended her independence in being able to pursue financial industry reform.

Naturally, the Sanders campaign had a reply, which was this: Hillary Clinton is now squarely in the pocket of big donors on Wall Street.

She rebutted Republicans who have criticized her for refusing to call the enemy “radical Islamic terrorism” and sharply rejected the GOP drive to turn Syrian refugees away from the US border in the aftermath of the massacres in Paris.

It’s clear that Clinton herself has learned a few lessons.

“The ground campaign in Iraq will only succeed if more Iraqi Sunnis join the fight”, Clinton said.

“We have a lot of work to do to really decimate ISIS in Iraq and Syria”.

She underscored that position again Thursday.

As recently as Saturday, during a Democratic candidate debate in Des Moines, Clinton had said: “It can not be an American fight”.

Republicans have sought to link Clinton to the unpopular foreign policy of Obama, casting her as continuing his strategy in the region.

“I don’t think she has to prove her bona fides or her principles when it comes to national security”.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson failed to name any U.S. regional allies in the fight against Islamic State. The White House has resisted the idea as highly risky, while Republican presidential candidates such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen.

Clinton laid out her plan a few hours ahead of her main Democratic presidential rival, Bernie Sanders, who spoke in Washington.

“So I think there has been an evolution in their threat, and we have to meet it”. Bush offered no specifics, but said the number of Americans sent to the region should be “in line with what our military generals recommend, not politicians”. Thursday’s speech is an attempt to set her record out in one place, at one time.

“Secretary Clinton is breaking from President Obama but not in the right way”, Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, a SC senator, told MSNBC.

Clinton repeatedly referred to “radical jihadism” in her prepared comments, but said acknowledging a connection between worldwide Islamic terror networks and Islam should not be done.