Story highlights Peter Bergen: Trump's recent speech was long on invective but short on policy specifics

Trump's claims are erroneous, and his plan to suspend immigration won't work, Bergen says

Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of the new book "United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists."

(CNN) To paraphrase an observation made by the American writer H.L. Mencken: For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.

Peter Bergen

Donald Trump's Monday speech in New Hampshire was billed as his big statement on terrorism. Coming a day after the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, the speech was his opportunity to lay out one of his campaign's signature claims in considerable detail: that he will be really tough on terrorists, including torturing them and killing their families.

Instead, Trump's speech was an oversimplification of Mencken-like proportions. It was long on invective against Hillary Clinton -- such as "Clinton wants to allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country" -- but short on policy specifics. The speech did briefly flesh out Trump's one big counterterrorism idea. In his words , "I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies."

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Trump failed to elaborate or specify which countries would be affected, but presumably this ban would apply to countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, all of which have significant ISIS or al Qaeda presences within their borders. The ban could also include countries such as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia -- longtime American allies that are, respectively, the world's largest and richest Muslim countries -- that also have been sites of terrorist attacks against Western and American targets.

Here's the critical question. Would this vague plan to suspend immigration solve the problem of terrorism in the States? Hardly. Since 9/11, every lethal jihadist terrorist attack in this country has been carried out by an American citizen or legal resident.