The United States, she said, should work with the coalition and with Syria’s neighbors “to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air”. “She should tell the American people how she’d actually pay for it”, O’Malley said on Twitter. Therefore, we must choose resolve. “So far, however, Turkey has been more focused on the Kurds than on countering ISIS”.
Advertisement
If Hillary Clinton achieves her goal and becomes the US’s first woman president, will she govern as Hillary Clinton, or as Hillary Rodham Clinton? Her biggest risk comes from being associated with Obama’s foreign policy, given that polls show the public is increasingly pessimistic about the president’s handling of world affairs.
But Clinton, while advocating for a more aggressive and engaged approach, did not rebuke the commander-in-chief. Jim Talent, a Republican from Missouri who has advised GOP presidential candidates on foreign policy.
After the Islamist carnage in Paris, however, his first-term secretary of state on Thursday called for ramping it up against ISIS in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
With the President thousands of miles away on an around-the-world trip – and under attack over a defensive press conference in the wake of the ISIS rampages that killed more than 120 people in France last week – Clinton had the national security stage to herself.
The bottom line is Clinton didn’t need to attack Sanders, least of all on the issue of universal health care, which is one of the more popular (and, yes, expensive) parts of his agenda. He called for sending more regular American troops the Middle East to fight the IS group, adding to the more than 3,000 USA troops that Obama has deployed to Iraq.
She also warned the encryption that technology firms such as Apple have embraced for mobile phones and other devices may be interfering with the government’s ability to prevent terrorist attacks.
The NY Times noted that a few Democratic voters said that the ability to deliver change was the most important quality they sought in a candidate, and among those voters Bernie Sanders was the most popular.
“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”, Clinton said.
“No, I am not a pacifist”.
Sanders conceded “international terrorism is a major issue” that must be addressed.
Clinton has also called for a over Syria, which she describes as an important way to create stability and bring other nations to the negotiating table.
Clinton said that while the fight against ISIS and radical jihadism is a “worldwide fight”, the U.S. “must lead it”. “I think that when you go to a formal declaration of war, you have to really understand who the enemy is, what you are trying to achieve against that enemy [and] what the resources you are going to need are”. “We are better than that”, she said.
In the 2008 campaign, Ms Clinton’s vote in support of the 2003 Iraq war was a key factor in losing the nomination contest to Mr Obama.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington pushed legislation toward approval that would establish new hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the U.S. Obama has promised a veto, but his top aides struggled Thursday to limit Democratic defections.
Clinton supports the President’s plan to put on the ground in northern Syria.
Reading her speech at a brisk clip from a teleprompter at the Council on Foreign Relations in NY City, she slowed momentarily to mock three words – “radical Islamic terrorism” – that Republicans often accuse President Barack Obama of purposefully avoiding. “We can’t outsource this”.
Advertisement
“It’s time to begin a new phase to intensify and broaden our efforts, to smash the would-be caliphate and deny ISIS control of territory in Iraq and Syria”, Clinton said, according to Politico. “The cost of these tax cuts will be paid for by a set of proposals Clinton supports in order to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share”.
