Clinton critical of Obama foreign policy, says 'failure' to act in Syria created vacuum for jihad

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

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 airstrikes 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.

________

 

How are things in Libya these days, Mrs. Clinton?

 

[Valin]

Hard-line Hillary: where is it coming from?

Paul Mirengoff

August 10, 2014

 

Jeffrey Goldberg reports on his remarkable interview with Hillary Clinton. The report and accompanying transcript make the former Secretary of State sound like a neo-conservative, at least in the loose sense in which the term is tossed about.

 

First, Clinton takes President Obama to task for not intervening against ISIS in Syria. The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad. . .left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled, Clinton declares.

 

Second, Clinton calls for the equivalent of a cold war against jihadism generally. Describing herself as hepped-up on the subject, she tells Goldberg that the resilience and expansion of Islamist terrorism means that the U.S. must develop an overarching strategy to confront it.

 

(Snip)

 

What, then, is in it for Clinton to talk this way? My guess is that she sees Obama, and her time working for him, as an albatross, and feels she must distance herself from him at all costs. She cant do so on domestic policy because (1) the party faithful wouldnt stand for it and (2) this isnt the realm of her participation in the Obama administration.

 

Clinton also may sense that things are likely to get worse for America and American interests when it comes to terrorism and jihad. If so, it makes sense for her to start positioning herself as a hardliner now.

 

Clinton may well believe portions of what told Goldberg. But Im not ready to conclude that she told him them for that reason.