WASHINGTON (TNS) – Americans “need to come to grips with the idea that we are in the midst of the next world war,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday.

Some candidates at Thursday’s candidate forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington avoided any mention of the shootings the day before in San Bernardino. Others mentioned them only in passing. Christie made the rampage a focal point of his speech.

“From the time I began to watch the events unfold last night, I (was) convinced that it was a terrorist attack,” said Christie.

“The president continues to wring his hands and say ‘we’ll see.’… But those folks dressed in tactical gear with semi-automatic weapons came there to do something.”

Christie warned that the shooting should be a wake-up call for stepped up national defense and intelligence. He made no mention of gun control laws, which have been the focus of the Democratic response to the massacre.

“If a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, Calif., can be a target for a terrorist attack, then every place in America is a target for a terrorist attack,” Christie said.

He tied the attacks to those of Sept. 11, 2001, drawing on his personal experience as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey in the aftermath of that attack and as the neighbor of people who perished in the World Trade Center.

“These acts of terrorism are not theoretical to me,” he said. “It’s not something I’ve been briefed about in the basement of the Capitol, not something I saw on TV.”

“What I am worried about now as a nation is that we are forgetting,” he said. “As a nation we have become complacent and soft and unwilling to do the difficult things that need to be done.”

While the facts surrounding the San Bernardino incident remain murky, he added, what is clear is that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were blindsided, just as they were in Paris before the deadly shootings there last month.

Christie blamed weak leadership.

“We need to do these things,” Christie said of his call for more aggressive law enforcement and a hawkish foreign policy. “If we don’t do them, then we are putting you and your family at risk.”