In her most strongly worded criticism yet of the US president’s foreign policy, Barak Obama’s first-term secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton said in an interview that the US decision not to intervene early in the Syrian civil war was a “failure.”
She joined Republican critics and observers who blamed the US president for failing to do enough to support Syrians who rebelled against President Bashar al-Assad. The ensuing civil war has been raging for three years now, with Assad still in power and an increasingly well-organised Islamic fringe gaining ground, The Guardian reported.
“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 in an interview with The Atlantic on Sunday.
The first phase of the Syrian uprising had taken place on Clinton’s watch, during her term as secretary of state during Obama’s first term in office; she declined to serve a second term and stepped down in early 2013. Clinton is considered by many a strong contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, after losing her bid to Obama in 2008.
“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organising principle,” Clinton said referring to Obama’s slogan describing his foreign policy thinking.
“I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the [Hamas] rockets. Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command and control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult,” Clinton said referring to the recent Israel-Gaza conflict.
Israel has been widely criticised for the deaths of Palestinian non-combatants, including hundreds of children, and the destruction of UN schools, hospitals and thousands of homes during its month-long war in Gaza. The Obama administration, also criticised for not speaking out enough against civilian deaths rebuked Israel at least once over the civilian death toll.
When asked whether Israel had taken the necessary steps to prevent the deaths of civilians, Clinton said that mistakes were made in war and that even the US, which took great care to avoid civilian casualties, was not able to avoid it entirely.
“We’ve made them. I don’t know a nation, no matter what its values are – and I think that democratic nations have demonstrably better values in a conflict position – that hasn’t made errors, but ultimately the responsibility rests with Hamas.”
