In the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attack in France that killed 80 people, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton today said the international community is at war against radical jihadists who use Islam to recruit and radicalise others.
"I think it's clear we are at war with these terrorist groups and what they represent. It's a different kind of war. We need to be smart about how we wage it and win it. So, I think we have to look at all possible approaches to doing just that," Clinton told CNN in an interview.
Clinton's remarks on this came soon after her Republican presidential rival Donald Trump said that the US is at war against these terrorist groups.
"We are at war against radical jihadists who use Islam to recruit and radicalise others in order to pursue their evil agenda. It's not so important what we call these people as to what we do about them," Clinton said.
"I think back to our success in getting bin Laden. It was important that we built the case, we got the information and that the President ordered the raid. Well, here, we have an ideology, it's not a nation state, and when people draw comparisons with World War, and even call this World War III, it's a very different kind of war. And we could be easily misled," she observed.
In a statement issued by her campaign, Clinton said the France terrorist attack shows that terrorists have struck at one of the closest allies in Europe, attacking families celebrating the history and culture of their country on Bastille Day.
"Every American stands in strong solidarity with the people of France, and we say with one voice: we will not be intimidated. We will never allow terrorists to undermine the egalitarian and democratic values that underpin our very way of life," she said.
"This cowardly attack only strengthens our commitment to our alliance and to defeating terrorism around the world," Clinton said.
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Clinton said clearly what is happening is terrorist groups are seeing that they have opportunities inside France or both home-grown terrorism and importing terrorists.
"I have proposed a series of measures to combat these kinds of attacks, including launching an intelligence surge and the French and our European friends through the EU, through NATO, individual nations, have to be willing to work with us to try to get better intelligence that will help them and also help us prevent attacks," she said to a question.
"I would point people to read more about what the hopes and ambitions of ISIS happen to be. They would love to draw the United States into a ground war in Syria. They actually think the end times could be hastened if we had some great confrontation in that region," she said.
"So, we've got to be smart about this, not get pushed or pulled into taking action that doesn't have some positive effects it needs to have. So, I would be very focused on intelligence surge, I would be very focused on working with our partners and allies and intensify our efforts against the ideologues who peddle radical jihadism online," Clinton said.
She acknowledged that there has been progress on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, territory is being taken back and the air strikes have been consistent, relentless.
"But I think it's also clear that as a result, of these advances against ISIS, and their main headquarters in Raqqah, their urgent desire to inflict terrorist attack elsewhere has led them to accelerate, reaching out not only directly but indirectly through the radicalisation online," she said.
"I have been saying for months, we have got to do a better job combating them and their hateful ideology online. We need to enlist the help of more nations and institutions to do that," Clinton said.
