Republicans demand US lead a new war to ‘eradicate Isis’ after Paris attacks

Following a Democratic television debate on Saturday that was dominated by calls for a tougher response to Islamic State radicals, leading Republicans joined the fray on Sunday in a series of political interviews that also saw linked attacks on immigration and calls for more intelligence surveillance.

 

“This is clearly an act of war and an attack on one of our Nato allies, and we should invoke Article 5 of the Nato agreement, and bring everyone together to put together a coalition to confront this challenge,” Senator Marco Rubio said on ABC.

 

He was joined by his Florida rival Jeb Bush, who also demanded the US lead a new war to “eradicate Isis from the face of the earth” and warned that screening of Muslim refugees from Syria was unlikely to be fully effective in preventing terrorist infiltration of the US.

 

“Ultimately, the best way to deal with the refugee crisis is to create safe zones inside Syria so that people don’t risk their lives and you have don’t have what will be a national security challenge both for our country and Europe,” Bush said on CNN.

 

“We should focus our efforts as it relates to refugees on the Christians that are being slaughtered,” he added, suggesting that specific efforts should take place to determine individuals’ religion before refugees were admitted into the US.

 

Republicans are increasingly less reticent than Democrats to describe the battle against Isis in religious terms. The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham went furthest of all the presidential candidates on Sunday by demanding an immediate ground invasion of Syria.

 

Read More: Republicans demand US lead a new war to ‘eradicate Isis’ after Paris attacks | US news | The Guardian