Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday that "there's a 9/11 coming" after the Paris terror attacks and called for 10,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria to help fight the Islamic State.
"I'm trying to protect America from another 9/11, and without American boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, we're going to get hit here at home," Graham, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union." "And if you don't understand that, you're not ready to be commander-in-chief, in my view."
The coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday left at least 129 dead and another 350 wounded, nearly one hundred of them seriously. French and U.S. officials have said all signs point to ISIS being responsible for the attacks. A White House official said Sunday that there is no clear threat to the U.S. at this time, though it is clear the militant group wants to launch an attack on U.S. soil.
"If we don't do these things soon, what you've seen in Paris is coming to America," Graham said.
Graham and other Republicans running for president have called on the White House to develop a more urgent military strategy for dealing with ISIS. Not all have been as hawkish as Graham, however.
Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) said Sunday the U.S. needs to launch more airstrikes against ISIS, but came up short of advocating for sending a certain number of ground troops to the region right now. He said America's Sunni allies need to lead the fight.
"I think it’s premature to say the exact numbers," Rubio said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," when asked specifically about ground troops. "The best fighters on the ground are proving to be the Kurds, and to some extent the Sunni tribes who are autonomous, but we’re not directly supporting them. So that needs to begin to happen.
"We also have to get our Sunni allies in the region more involved in this fight," Rubio went on. "The only way to ultimately defeat ISIS is for them to be defeated ideologically and militarily, by the Sunnis themselves."