Hillary Clinton Supports IDF Control of Judea, Samaria

[King_David]

Hillary Clinton devoted a large part of an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic to strong support for Israel.

Clinton expressed support for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's insistence on maintaining military control of Judea and Samaria. "If I were the prime minister of Israel, you're damn right I would expect to have control over security, because even if I'm dealing with [Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud] Abbas, who is 79 years old, and other members of Fatah, who are enjoying a better lifestyle and making money on all kinds of things, that does not protect Israel from the influx of Hamas or cross-border attacks from anywhere else. With Syria and Iraq, it is all one big threat. So Netanyahu could not do this [forego military control] in good conscience," she explained.

"I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets," she said. "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."

Asked if she believed that Israel had done enough to prevent the deaths of children and other innocent people, she said: "[J]ust as we try to do in the United States and be as careful as possible in going after targets to avoid civilians," mistakes are made, she said. "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."

http://virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=13854

[Jefferson23]

1. No surprise, she's just getting started. n/t

[King_David]

2. Why no surprise

If Israel unpopular in the polls?

[Jefferson23]

3. If Israel unpopular in the polls? I don't understand your question. n/t

[rhett o rick]

10. I think she is a neocon. nm

[Jefferson23]

4. Hillary Clinton interview with Jeffrey Goldberg- August 10, 2014

The former secretary of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine. She says this about President Obama's: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."

?na3yx9

President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion. In an interview in February, the president told me that “when you have a professional army ... fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict—the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”

Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.

snip* I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets,” she told me. “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.”

I asked her if she believed that Israel had done enough to prevent the deaths of children and other innocent people.

“[J]ust as we try to do in the United States and be as careful as possible in going after targets to avoid civilians,” mistakes are made, she said. “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.”

She went on to say that “it’s impossible to know what happens in the fog of war. Some reports say, maybe it wasn’t the exact UN school that was bombed, but it was the annex to the school next door where they were firing the rockets. And I do think oftentimes that the anguish you are privy to because of the coverage, and the women and the children and all the rest of that, makes it very difficult to sort through to get to the truth.”

She continued, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Hamas initiated this conflict.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/?single_page=true

[enough]

5. I'm 70 years old. I've voted for the Democratic candidate for President

in every general election since I was eligible to vote. I know all the reasons to keep doing that. But I'm afraid Hillary Clinton has lost me on this. I just don't think I can stomach it.

I also know that the number of Americans for whom this will be a serious issue is negligible. So does Ms. Clinton. And that fact is, if she runs, by the time the election rolls around I will be so furious with her enemies, that I will probably vote for her out of fury at them. So ..........

[lumpy]

7. I understand fully; shaking my head re. Hillary's statements.

I will have to do a little rethinking about her nomination for prez.

[Jefferson23]

6. Hillary Clinton distances herself from Obama's foreign policy

8/10/14

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Distancing herself from President Barack Obama's foreign policy, potential 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview published on Sunday that the U.S. decision not to intervene early in the Syrian civil war was a "failure."

Republican critics and others have faulted Obama for doing too little to support Syrians who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad. Syria has been torn apart by a civil war for three years, with Assad staying in power and Islamic militants among the opposition gaining strength.

"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.

Clinton was Obama's secretary of state during his first term as president, stepping down in early 2013, so she was part of the administration during the start of the Syria uprising. Seen as a possible strong contender for the 2016 U.S. Democratic presidential nomination, she ran unsuccessfully against Obama for the party's nomination in 2008.

Asked about Obama's slogan of "Don’t do stupid stuff" to describe his foreign policy thinking, Clinton said, "Great nations need organising principles, and 'Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organising principle."

In the interview, Clinton also offered strong support for Israel and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a tense relationship with Obama.

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN0GA0TA20140810

[Jefferson23]

8. Why Hillary Clinton spoke out on Obama

Hillary Clinton has taken her furthest, most public step away yet from President Barack Obama, rejecting the core of his self-described foreign policy doctrine and describing his decision against backing Syrian rebels early on as a “failure.”

She also stood unequivocally with Israel in its current battle with Hamas in a lengthy, detailed interview on foreign policy with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, which was conducted last week prior to the president’s authorization of airstrikes against Islamist militants in Iraq. The interview was published late Saturday.

A source familiar with the interview said Clinton’s team gave the White House a warning that it had taken place. Clinton aides described the interview as one intended to promote her memoir.

Political watchers will be tempted to characterize Clinton’s comments as calibrating away from an unpopular president as she looks toward a second presidential campaign. But Clinton has always been more of a hawk than Obama, and she has reached a point where she seems comfortable explaining their differences. Still, while her comments may not have been a specific effort to escape the creeping shadow of global chaos stretching over the White House, they will be viewed that way.

” I guess she is ready to begin to rip the Clinton franchise away from the Obama franchise,” said Steve Clemons, an Atlantic foreign policy blogger. “This is a staggeringly important interview and, in many ways, is going to reawaken the substantial resistance to her as a reckless interventionist by some quarters. … Her comments on Syria are very provocative.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-takes-president-barack-obama-109887.html#ixzz3A2uGgtWS

[Ken Burch]

9. In other words, she's against a two-state solution and, thus, against peace.

With that position, HRC came out for keeping the I/P conflict going forever, and for treating the Palestinians just as badly as the U.S. government treated the First Nations on this continent in the 19th Century.

I will cross-post this in GD.