Clinton: ‘We have to up our game’ against ISIS

Hillary Clinton says last week’s shooting in California was a “terror attack,” and called for increased gun control and a renewed effort to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Clinton was blunt about the motivations behind the San Bernardino shooting that left 14 dead and dozens injured.

{mosads}“What happened in San Bernardino was a terror attack,” the Democratic presidential front-runner said. “No one is arguing that.”

Evidence emerged that suggested that a married couple behind the shooting were inspired by ISIS, though U.S. officials have said there has been no evidence yet to suggest the attack was directly facilitated by the group.

In her interview, Clinton said a renewed U.S. ground force in the Middle East to fight ISIS would do more harm than good, but opened the door to specific changes in policy. She backed an increase in special ops forces in the region, and called for a “much more robust air campaign” against ISIS targets.

“We have to up our game against terrorists abroad and at home,” she said.

She also argued that a push to fight ISIS, as well as the push to beef up gun control laws, are two complementary pieces of public safety in the U.S. She noted that before the California shooting, the last mass shooting in the U.S. was at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, and additional steps need to be taken to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

“We should be able to approach both of these with some sense of unity about how we prevent terrorist attacks, and how we prevent the wrong people from getting a hold of guns,” she said.

Clinton pushed back against people who would say the U.S. is at war with radical Islamists, saying that there are radicals in religions across the world, and the phrase is overbroad and works towards ISIS’s goals.

“It helps create this clash of civilizations,” she said. “ISIS uses this as a way of saying, ‘We are in a war against the West, you must join us. If you are a Muslim, you must join us.’”

She also noted that the private sector, particularly when it comes to technology, has a role to play in combating ISIS. With the group conducting outreach over social media — one of the California shooters reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook before the attack — those companies need to help stifle that recruitment, she said.

“We’re going to need help from Facebook, and from YouTube, and from Twitter,” she said. “They cannot permit the recruitment and actual direction of attacks, and the celebration of violence by this sophisticated Internet user.”