Clinton calls for US to 'intensify’ fight against Daesh

Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says containing Daesh (ISIL) is not enough and that the United States should lead a fight to defeat the terrorist network.  

In a major foreign policy speech on Thursday, Clinton distanced herself from President Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating Daesh and called for greater use of American ground troops against the Takfiri group in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York she would intensify the fight against Daesh if she is elected president next year.

She called on the Republican-controlled Congress to approve the use of ground troops against ISIL, emphasizing that doing so would signal "that the US is committed to this fight. The time for delay is over. We should get this done."

"This is no time to be scoring political points. We must use every pillar of American power, including our values, to fight terror," she added.

The former US secretary of state made the remarks nearly a week after bombers and gunmen launched coordinated attacks in and around the French capital, killing at least 129 people and injuring more than 350 others. ISIL terrorists, who control parts of Syria and Iraq, have claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks.

The terror attacks came just hours after an interview aired in which President Obama boasted about recent successes against Daesh. "I don't think they're gaining strength," Obama told ABC News. "We have contained them."

Clinton said it’s time for the US-led coalition to broaden its efforts to smash the so-called ISIL caliphate.“The United States has been conducting this fight for more than a year; it’s time to be begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts."

“We should have no illusions about how difficult the mission before us really is … but if we press forward on both sides of the border, in the air on the ground and as well as diplomatically, I do believe we can crush ISIS’s enclave of terror,” she added.

Daesh should be denied control of territory

Clinton said the group should be denied control of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The Democratic presidential hopeful also called for an immediate intelligence surge in the Middle East region, including Arabic speakers with close ties to intelligence services.

She said the surge would help the US and its allies to identify and eliminate ISIL’s command and control as well as its economic lifelines.

SIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

The United States and its allies have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria since last year.

Observers say while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like ISIL, they in fact helped create and train those organizations to affect their policies in the Middle East.

According to US geopolitical commentator Dean Henderson, the United States and its allies have encouraged the spread of the ISIL terrorist group in the Middle East to create a “perpetual war” in the region and advance the American military-industrial complex.

“This is what ISIS is all about, this is the reason that ISIS exists, because we’re going to be able to make a lot more arms sales to a lot more actors in the Middle East,” said Dean Henderson, an author and columnist at Veterans Today, using another acronym for the terror network.

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