Hillary Clinton said it would be "a mistake" to deploy American troops to Iraq and Syria if Islamic State successfully carried out a terrorist attack on U.S. soil during a national security address at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday.
The comment came during a question-and-answer session with CNN's Fareed Zakaria after the Democratic presidential candidate gave a 32-minute speech that focused on how she would defeat Islamic State.
Zakaria asked Clinton, "If there were, God forbid, another terrorist attack, God forbid in the United States, do you think the pressure to send American troops into Syria would be unstoppable?"
The Democratic frontrunner responded:
"Well, it would certainly grow, but I think it would be a mistake. Look, as I said, we should be sending more special operators. We should be empowering our trainers in Iraq.
"We should be leading an air coalition. We have a lot of work to do to be able to really decimate ISIS [the Islamic State] in Iraq and in Syria...Injecting some large contingent of American forces complicates that, in my opinion. Right now we need to keep the pressure on the people on the ground and get them to change their priorities and work together."
After the Islamic State launched coordinated terror attacks in Paris last week that killed at least 129 people and wounded hundreds more, which came the day after the jihadist group carried out a bombing in Beirut and less than two weeks after it allegedly took down a Russian plane with a bomb over Egypt, presidential candidates from both parties have been focusing on their policy ideas to degrade and defeat the terror group.
There are extra security concerns in the U.S. after new videos that depict the group threatening to attack Washington, D.C., and New York City were released.
Clinton talked about her plan to defeat the Islamic State in the speech and said she would have U.S. personnel assist local forces, both Kurds and local Sunni tribes that would take back Islamic State-controlled territory with help from an air coalition. She also explained that she would work with Arab allies and Turkey to get them to play a larger role on the ground.
The former secretary of state additionally said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must ultimately be removed from power, but that can only happen through a political process. The priority should be placed on countering Islamic State for now, but Washington should not tell Syrian rebels that they can only fight the terrorist group and not the Assad regime.
Another issue Clinton addressed was the debate over whether the U.S. should take in refugees from Syria. She said she believes the U.S. should do so because it is morally right and turning them away would help bolster the Islamic State's anti-Western message toward Muslims.
Members of Congress and governors from both the Democratic and Republican Parties argue that the U.S. should pause the refugee resettlement program to ensure that authorities can be confident in determining if migrants are members or supporters of the Islamic State or al Qaeda, who are trying to infiltrate the refugee influx to Western countries.