Hillary Clinton Presents Her Plan to Battle ISIS

By Amy Chozick

Republican presidential candidates wasted no time after the terrorist attacks in Paris to put forth their ideas for fighting the Islamic State. They’ve proposed bombing oil fields in the Middle East (Donald J. Trump), allowing only Christian refugees into the United States (Senator Ted Cruz of Texas) and sending 10,000 American troops to Iraq and Syria (Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina).

The Democratic presidential candidates, meanwhile, have been less vocal in how they would respond to the attacks that shook the French capital last Friday.On Thursday, however, Hillary Rodham Clinton said that more should be done to empower Iraqi ground forces to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.“The ground campaign in Iraq will only succeed if more Iraqi Sunnis join the fight,” she said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

She also called for a no-fly zone in Syria, saying, “we should retool and ramp up our efforts to equip viable Syrian opposition efforts.”

“If we press forward on both sides of the border, in the air and on the ground as well as diplomatically, I do believe we can crush ISIS’s enclave of terror,” she said.

The Democrats so far have spoken mostly in broad platitudes, vowing to support France and stand with American allies in the fight against terrorism, but offering few specifics. In her speech, Mrs. Clinton faced the tricky dynamic of putting forth her own ideas without appearing to criticize President Obama, under whom she served as secretary of state for four years.

In the second Democratic debate in Des Moines on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Martin O’Malley bowed their heads in a solemn moment of solidarity with the French and affirmed their commitment to joining a coalition to defeat the Islamic State. But the conversation quickly evolved into criticism of Mrs. Clinton’s 2002 vote as senator to authorize the Iraq War, and to her policies as secretary of state, including her push to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. (“I’m not a big fan of regime change,” Mr. Sanders said.)

But as Republicans have used the tragedy in France to highlight what they say are Mr. Obama’s significant weaknesses on foreign policy, Democrats have been loath to criticize his approach. Even as the party’s presidential candidates wade deeper into policies on Syria and Iraq, they must walk a careful line not to appear to be undermining Mr. Obama, who remains widely popular among Democratic primary voters.

The address marks the second time that Mrs. Clinton has delivered a wide-ranging foreign policy speech in a campaign heavily focused on economic issues. In September, she gave a substantial address about the Iran nuclear deal before a question-and-answer session at the Brookings Institution in Washington.