Hillary Clinton Calls Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook ‘ISIS Wannabes’
Hillary Clinton has attempted to project toughness when it comes to discussing Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook, the shooters who carried out the recent San Bernardino attacks that left 14 dead.
As election season finally starts to rev up to full speed for Hillary, Tashfeen and Syed are likely to be two of the most important names thrown around in the campaign — despite the fact that they aren’t even running for the office. The threat of domestic terror has shot to the top of many Americans’ agenda when it comes to voting, and Clinton will need to stay on the offensive when it comes to presenting herself as the answer to potential violence in the United States. Unless a bigger crime comes along than that carried out by Malik and her husband, the pair will be an important campaign target.
On Sunday at the Brooking Institution’s Saban Forum, Hillary spoke about the husband and wife pair in a term that may be seen as diminutive by some — “wannabe,” reported ABC News. Tashfeen and Syed have become nationally recognized figures in a very short period of time, and although it’s for something reprehensible, Clinton appears to not want to keep them in check.
“We need to put the great disrupters to work in disrupting ISIS and stopping them from having this open platform for communicating with their dedicated fighters and their wannabes like [Malik and Farook] in San Bernardino… What we see right now I think is just the beginning of directed attacks and self-radicalization that leads to attacks like what we think happened in San Bernardino, and we’re going to have to ask our technology companies -– and Israel is leader in this area –- to help us on this. The government is good in some respects but nowhere near as good as those of you who are in this field.”
Hillary spoke at length about the shooting that has dominated U.S. news coverage since it look place last week. As more and more information has come forward about Tashfeen, Clinton spoke about ways that anti-terror units could have cut off her resources. At one point, she referred to a post that Malik had made online that should have served as a tip to investigators.
“[Malik] posted her allegiance to Baghdad and ISIS on Facebook. We’re going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space, just as we have to destroy their would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space and this is complicated… You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints. Freedom of speech… but if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communication.”
Hillary Clinton will have her work cut out for her when distancing herself from the public’s negative perception of Barack Obama’s administration’s success against fighting ISIS. A recent poll from CBS News and The New York Times, found that Obama had a 31 percent overall approval rating for his ISIS strategy, while maintaining just above 50 percent among Democrats. Even among his own party, a nearly 70 percent majority believe that the fight against ISIS is going somewhat or very badly, and that was weeks before Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook became household names.
[Image via FBI Handout and Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
