Muslim clerics around the world need to condemn this past week's terror attacks in Paris and other incidents as violations of the Koran and of an "honorable and decent religion" to prevent further attacks, Sen. John McCain said Sunday, but that hasn't been happening.
"It's a threat, the lone wolf," McCain said on CNN's
"State of the Union.""It's a serious threat, but that's far different from sleeper cells manned by people who were trained, as one of these young men [in Paris] was in Yemen."
Further terrorists are being trained in Syria, where the United States has refused to help the Free Syrian Army fight back against the Bashar Assad regime, said McCain.
"They're killing more than we are training, and we have to go to the heart of it, because there's one thing to have a lone wolf, and that's bad, but far worse is a person who has been trained and equipped and sent on a specific mission," said McCain. "That's where you get the big attacks."
Also on CNN Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder commented that the United States will try to coordinate more with the French, and that there has to be better coordination among all the allies, but McCain criticized him and the Obama administration Sunday for "leading from behind."
Obama has declared Yemen and Somalia as being "success stories," when it comes to dealing with terrorism, said McCain, but the Paris attackers were trained "from the same organization."
The United States made a serious mistake when it did not leave a sustaining force in Iraq, said McCain, and when Obama did not heed his national security advisers about arming the Free Syrian Army.
"That laid the groundwork for ISIS and now we have a situation where the largest extremist caliphate in history is now in Iraq and Syria, and we have no strategy, we have no strategy to degrade or defeat it," said McCain.
He has called for a more coherent strategy for dealing with global terrorism, including more boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria where the United States has created a coalition to produce airstrikes against ISIS targets.
"It would require some boots on the ground, not like before, but we certainly need air controllers," said McCain. "We haven't been able to drive ISIS out of a town called Khobani, using the full weight or American airpower, for several months now. We lost 86 brave Americans and 400 wounded to take Fallujah. That's one-tenth the size of Mosul."
ISIS is winning, insisted McCain, and "we need to go after them...we need to understand that Syria and Iraq are the same."
McCain said that by boots on the ground, he means air controllers, training, air assets, and an across-the-board increase, which is obvious from talking to military experts.
"I appreciate Eric holder keeping an eye on people that come and go, but the fact is, as long as the incubator is there, we're going to have people who are going to try to do what they did in Paris a few days ago," McCain said.
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