Despite her protests that she can stand up to Wall Street and has sponsored legislation anathema to the interests of NY bankers, financial investors and hedge fund managers, Sanders, the self-described Democratic socialist who blames Wall Street for most of the country’s economic ills, wasn’t buying it.
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While Clinton said she mostly supports President Barack Obama’s efforts to combat Islamic State militants, she breaks with the administration’s focus on ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad. “A key obstacle standing in the way is a shortage of good intelligence about ISIS and its operations”.
“It actually plays into their hands by alienating partners we need by our side”, Clinton added.
And still yet, Clinton touted her bipartisan bona fides, using the Manhattan venue for her speech to remind everyone that she had also been in power during America’s worst encounter with terrorism.
She refuses to consider sizable USA ground forces, but says “Congress should swiftly pass an updated authorization to use military force” – force the world knows we have no intention of using?
Meanwhile, 46 percent of Clinton’s supporters say they can’t be persuaded by another candidate, compared with 36 percent of Sanders’s backers. “If we have learned anything from 15 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s that local people and nations have to secure their own communities”. “What we have done with the president saying there would be special forces sent is right in line with what I think-but they need to get there and we need to take stock of whether we need more”. “But we can and should support local and regional ground forces in carrying out this mission”.
Clinton said defeating Islamic State will require more ground forces to counter the militants, who have carved out a self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Like President Obama, I do not believe that we should again have 100,000 American troops in combat in the Middle East. “We have a global team responding to those reports around the clock, and we prioritize any safety-related report, including any terrorism-related reports, for immediate review”. But she did not explain how to make this happen in the face of the harsh realities of Iraqi history and contemporary politics.
If you disagree with any of the reasons below, keep in mind to focus on the logic of my argument, and not any conspiracy theories about why I’m writing this piece, or what I’ve written in the past.
“Two, disrupt and dismantle the growing terrorist infrastructure that facilitates the flow of fighters, financing, arms, and propaganda around the world”, she continued.
“There is no doubt we have to do a better job contesting online space, including websites and chat rooms where jihadists communicate with followers”, Clinton said Thursday in remarks before the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the light of recent heated debates in the USA on restricting Syrian refugee inflow to Christians, Clinton said: “We can not allow terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our values and our humanitarian obligations”. “… The United States must work with Europe to dramatically and immediately improve intelligence sharing and counterterrorism coordination. European countries also should have the flexibility to enhance their border controls when circumstances warrant”.
“We began our fight against al Qaeda in 2001 and it took us quite a few years before we were able to eliminate Osama bin Laden and the top leadership and neutralize them as an effective force”.
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In Iraq, she called for Baghdad to speed up “national reconciliation” and “get its house in order”, so more Sunni Arabs would join the fight against IS. Admittedly, “10,000 troops” is probably less of a carefully thought through figure than a nice-sounding placeholder for the concept that we need a much larger infantry force in the fight; if the war were to widen and intensify, maybe the new placeholder figure would be closer to 100K.
