Hillary: Obama Policy In Syria Helped Terrorists to Thrive

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Hillary Clinton, the front-runner among potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates, is sharply distancing herself from President Obama's foreign policy, particularly in Syria, as Americans appear to continue losing confidence in his handling of key international affairs.

Clinton, who as secretary of state was Obama’s top diplomat, suggested during an in-depth interview with The Atlantic magazine that the president’s foreign-policy mantra of “don’t do stupid stuff” lacked sufficient depth.

“Great nations need organizing principles,” she said in the roughly 8,000-word interview released Sunday. “And ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

The interview comes as Americans’ opinion of how Obama is handling crises in Israel, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, continues to sink.

A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released Tuesday, three days before Obama ordered air strikes and humanitarian airdrops in Syria, showed a record-high disapproval rating. Sixty percent of those polled disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy efforts, compared to 36 percent who approved.

The interview also could help or hurt the former first lady’s effort to burnish her own foreign policy credentials ahead of an official 2016 campaign.

Clinton declined to say whether the deadly, unexpected rise of the militant group Islamic State was the result of Obama several years ago not wanting to help build a moderate opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

However, she said the “failure” to help build up a credible fighting force from among those who started the protests against Assad “left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

Clinton also said in the interview, which appears to have been conducted before U.S. air strikes began Friday in Iraq against Islamic State, that Obama is “incredibly intelligent” and “thoughtful.”

On the conflict in Israel, Clinton was more closely aligned with Obama, saying the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks by the terror group Hamas.

But Clinton suggested that international criticism of Israel for its deadly attacks on Hamas in Gaza, particularly one on an apparent United Nations school, is unfair, saying the civilian casualties happen in “the fog of war,” compared to the administration, which called the UN shelter attack "disgraceful."
 
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WHY HILLARY SPOKE OUT -

Hillary Clinton has taken her furthest, most public step away yet from President Barack Obama, rejecting the core of his self-described foreign policy doctrine and describing his decision against backing Syrian rebels early on as a “failure.”

She also stood unequivocally with Israel in its current battle with Hamas in a lengthy, detailed interview on foreign policy with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, which was conducted last week prior to the president’s authorization of airstrikes against Islamist militants in Iraq. The interview was published late Saturday.

Obama’s foreign policy doctrine as a whole has been slammed as too slow to respond, too passive instead of proactive, especially as crises have unfolded everywhere from Ukraine to the Gaza Strip. In the interview, Clinton, who served as secretary of state during Obama’s first term, argues there’s a balance that can be struck between muscularity and isolationism — bolstering the concept of American exceptionalism, which she promotes in her new book, “Hard Choices.”

A source familiar with the interview said Clinton’s team gave the White House a warning that it had taken place. Clinton aides described the interview as one intended to promote her memoir, and Goldberg as a long-planned-for target on a list of interviews around the book — and not part of an overarching political strategy related to 2016.

Political watchers will be tempted to characterize Clinton’s comments as calibrating away from an unpopular president as she looks toward a second presidential campaign. But Clinton has always been more of a hawk than Obama, and she has reached a point where she seems comfortable explaining their differences. Still, while her comments may not have been a specific effort to escape the creeping shadow of global chaos stretching over the White House, they will be viewed that way.

” I guess she is ready to begin to rip the Clinton franchise away from the Obama franchise,” said Steve Clemons, an Atlantic foreign policy blogger. “This is a staggeringly important interview and, in many ways, is going to reawaken the substantial resistance to her as a reckless interventionist by some quarters. … Her comments on Syria are very provocative.”

One Democratic operative who asked not to be identified said the clear takeaway from the interview was simply that Clinton advisers are “good poll readers,” a reference to Obama’s sinking public approval ratings. A Clinton adviser replied, “That’s ridiculous,” stressing she has no polling operation.

Syria, where the civil war has contributed to the current conflict in Iraq, was on track to become a clear flash point between Clinton and Obama before she even left the administration, and it remains one area where the two are obviously still divided.

In his own interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, published this weekend, Obama reiterated his belief — which he also stated in a separate interview with Goldberg two months ago — that early arming of Syrian rebels in that conflict was a “fantasy” because it would mean arming an opposition made up of “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” who had little chance against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

But Clinton never agreed with this view, and still doesn’t.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/...sident-barack-obama-109887.html#ixzz3A3dl3H3z
 
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All dems are steering a wide berth around BO. Kinda meaningless. It probably wont help them and he doesnt care.
Bad for the country but unless the two other branches if govt start taking their oathes of office seriously BO will ruin us.
 
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