Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State had criticized President Obama’s “don’t do stupid stuff” foreign policy in Iraq in an interview with The Atlantic. Clinton and several Republican members expressed that a long term counterterror strategy is needed and that Obama’s current methods are not an organizing principle.
Such criticisms have become extremely frequent since President Obama announced on Thursday that while the U.S. will be carrying out military operations in Iraq, they are not part of a long term plan to fight the ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). Speaker of the House, John Boehner however expressed that a long term strategy is necessary, “one that defines success as completing our mission, not keeping political promises”.
Clinton’s criticisms were not as direct as Boehner’s. However, her points reflected many of the concerns that many Republican leaders were having regarding the humanitarian crisis in Iraq and the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Regarding the conflict taking place over the Gaza Strip, Clinton stated that Hamas bore the “ultimate responsibility”.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter who specializes in the Middle East expressed that although Clinton served in the Obama administration she is distancing herself from the current president. In 2008, when Clinton narrowly lost to Obama to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, she placed herself between Obama and former president George W. Bush. Clinton told the reporter that one problem the U.S. government often shows is that its members tended to be too extreme.
"Do you think the next administration, whoever it is, can find some harmony between muscular intervention — 'We must do something' — vs. let's just not do something stupid, let's stay away from problems like Syria because it's a wicked problem and not something we want to tackle?" Goldberg asked.
"I think part of the challenge is that our government too often has a tendency to swing between these extremes," she answered. "The pendulum swings back and then the pendulum swings the other way. What I'm arguing for is to take a hard look at what tools we have. Are they sufficient for the complex situations we're going to face, or not? And what can we do to have better tools? I do think that is an important debate."
She even went far to express that if Obama had been more actively supporting U.S.-friendly groups in the Middle East, the ISIS may not be the threat that it is today.
