Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both say they are committed to the destruction of ISIS and use similar language to detail their plans, but retired U.S. Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney says there is a world of difference in what they mean.
“My Administration will aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut- off their funding, expanded intelligence sharing, and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting. We cannot allow the internet to be used as a recruiting tool, and for other purposes, by our enemy – we must shut down their access to this form of communication, and we must do so immediately,” said Trump earlier this week during a major national security address in Ohio.
Those words don’t sound much different than Hillary Clinton’s prescription for ISIS that she offered in her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
“We will strike their sanctuaries from the air and support local forces taking them out on the ground. We will surge our intelligence so we detect and prevent attacks before they happen. We will disrupt their efforts online to reach and radicalize young people in our country,” said Clinton in that speech.
McInerney says the similar words to not signify a similar agenda.
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton means the same thing that President Obama has done. We’re now at two years that ISIS has had a caliphate in Iraq and Syria,” said McInerney.
The general says one obvious difference in thwarting ISIS can be found in the candidates’ approach to the refugee crisis afflicting Europe. Clinton wants to exponentially increase the rate the U.S. accepts refugees while Trump this week called for “extreme vetting” to ensure anyone entering this country pledges allegiance to our Constitution.
But he says the biggest difference can be seen in how the two candidates approach the roots of radical Islam.
“We must use ideological warfare as well. Just as we won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of Radical Islam,” said Trump on Monday.
“Islam is not our adversary,” Clinton said in November 2015 in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing to do whatsoever with terrorism.”
McInerney says the divide could be more stark on this point.
“You’ve got to identify it. It is radical Islam. It is not violent extremism. I know not the ideology of violent extremism, but I do know the ideology of radical Islam: that is the Quran, the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet, and Sharia law. Those three things are the pillars that drive their rules of engagement and their brutal, autocratic way of governing people,” said McInerney.
He says Hillary Clinton still won’t admit what makes our enemies tick.
“Mrs. Clinton and President Obama have not yet identified it. She was secretary of state for four years and she still does not know the ideology. As Sun Tzu said, ‘Know thy enemy,'” said McInerney.
On top of the Democrats’ failure to identify our enemy, McInerney is deeply frustrated by their refusal to kill the enemy.
“The air campaign for the last two years has been pathetic. We have not destroyed ISIS. When ISIS fled from a small town near the Turkish border in Syria, they were coming out by the hundreds. We did not strike them because we were worried about collateral damage, meaning civilians. Well, the laws of land warfare allow you to do that,” said McInerney.
“Our humanity to them has caused the inhumanity toward the genocide on Christians, on Yazidis and even on Muslims,” said McInerney.
In the end McInerney says he isn’t worried about Trump’s demeanor in comparison to Clinton’s record.
“His language and demeanor don’t worry me as much as Mrs. Clinton’s demeanor or actions,” said McInerney, referencing Benghazi, the civil war in Syria, the rise of ISIS in Libya and beginning the process that led to the nuclear deal with Iran.
“They are completely different,” he said. “One is talk and one is action.”
