Hillary Clinton throws Obama to the wolves as she moves to define herself for a future 2016 presidential run.

Courtesy of Salon:  

During a long and in-depth interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, former secretary of state and likely future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton distanced herself from President Obama’s foreign policy, implying the Islamist extremist group ISIS would not be so powerful had the president listened to her advice and thrown American power more forcefully behind “moderate” Syrian rebel forces. 

“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. 

Clinton was known at the time to support a larger American investment in the Syrian civil war, and reiterated her belief that not doing so was a mistake in her recently released book about her time as secretary of state, “Hard Choices.”

Look I understand the importance of making distance from a President whose poll ratings are down when you are planning to run for his job in two years, but this really seems tacky. Especially considering how the Right Wing press is going to use this to beat up the President even more than before.

The conservatives have been attacking Obama over his decision in Syria for quite some time now, and this will give them that "I told you so" moment that they have been hoping for.

I mean just imagine how happy John McCain will be to read this.

I think former UK foreign secretary David Miliband was more honest in his assessment that the war in Iraq was really the destabilizing force which led to the rise of ISIS:  

"It's clearly the case that the invasion of Iraq, or more importantly what happened afterwards, is a significant factor in understanding the current situation in the country," Miliband told the Observer.

He said that he accepted that the consequences of the Iraq war had left the majority of the public in the US and the UK unwilling to support interventions in the Middle East, even to prevent humanitarian catastrophes, such as Syria. 

"You have to, you have to take responsibility," said Miliband. He added: "You can't press the rewind button."

In other words the President was responding to the desires of the American people when he made his choices in Syria, and those desires were the result of war fatigue and anger over our interventionist war in Iraq. (Hell even Laura Ingraham agrees with this.)

And who was it again who voted FOR that war?

Clinton's response to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is also troubling: 

Pressed on whether Israel was doing enough to limit civilian casualties, she answered: “It’s unclear. I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets. And there is the surprising number and complexity of the tunnels, and Hamas has consistently, not just in this conflict, but in the past, been less than protective of their civilians.” 

She said anti-Semitism was a factor in the unfair international reaction against Israel: “There are a number of factors going into it. You can’t ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what’s going on in Europe today. There are more demonstrations against Israel by an exponential amount than there are against Russia seizing part of Ukraine and shooting down a civilian airliner. So there’s something else at work here than what you see on TV.” 

So our response to the over 1,000 dead Palestinians, mostly civilians, is due to antisemitism?

You know I am going to support Clinton during her run for President, as I think that any Republican that won the White House would be a disaster, but I am going to have a hard time ginning up any enthusiasm while doing so.

There are other ways that Hillary could have fielded these questions, and I think it speaks to certain troubling signs in her character that she chose to answer them in this manner.