Hours after dozens of people were mowed down by a truck in France Thursday night, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the U.S. to enhance its fight against the Islamic State.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly asked the presumptive Democratic nominee if she would support French President Francois Hollande should he choose to invoke Article 5 of NATO to declare war on the Islamic State as a result of three major terrorist attacks in his country over the past 18 months.
“I have long called for NATO to be modernized, to take on the threat that terrorism poses in Europe, the Middle East and even in our own country,” Clinton said in an unprecedented call-in interview Thursday. “So I would be very interested in working to determine how best to do that.”
Clinton said one of her priorities as the potential commander in chief would be to launch an intelligence surge.
“We still do not have enough intelligence cooperation between our agencies and those in other countries, including in Europe and we need to have a focal point,” Clinton said.
In response to the more than 75 people who were killed and 50 others wounded Thursday, Clinton said America and its allies should “intensify” its efforts to root out terrorism, including a summit to discuss strategies, if necessary.
But O’Reilly, a critic of Clinton, asked if she believes the U.S. Congress should declare war on the terrorist group after this latest attack.
“We need to strengthen our alliances and I include NATO in that,” Clinton said. “We’ve got to do more to understand that this is a war against these terrorist groups, the radical jihadist groups. It’s a different kind of war. We need to be smart about how we wage it, but we have to be determined that we’re going to win it and that’s going to require working with other people.”
