Clinton Attempts to Carve Her Own Path on National Security

Hil­lary Clin­ton of­ten tells crowds on the cam­paign trail that Pres­id­ent Obama doesn’t get enough cred­it for a series of do­mest­ic ac­com­plish­ments, from health care re­form to the eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

But on Thursday, in a pres­id­en­tial cam­paign sud­denly re­framed by ter­ror­ist at­tacks in Par­is and a rising sense of danger in the Amer­ic­an elect­or­ate, she moved to place some dis­tance between her­self and a pres­id­ent who has taken cri­ti­cism from both parties for ap­pear­ing weak and out-of-step on for­eign policy.

Speak­ing at the Coun­cil on For­eign Re­la­tions in New York, she used her sweep­ing speech on glob­al ter­ror­ism to break from Obama—al­beit gingerly—in both sub­stance and tone. In con­trast to the pres­id­ent’s em­phas­is on “stra­tegic pa­tience and per­sist­ence,” Clin­ton called for a “new phase” in the fight against the Is­lam­ic State, de­tail­ing a plan to in­crease air­strikes, de­ploy ad­di­tion­al U.S. spe­cial forces to Syr­ia, and in­sti­tute a no-fly zone to provide safe areas for refugees.

“We have to break the group’s mo­mentum and then its back,” she said, break­ing with Obama’s pre­vi­ous com­ments that the Is­lam­ic State had been “con­tained” in Ir­aq and Syr­ia. “Our goal is not to de­ter or con­tain IS­IS, but to de­feat and des­troy IS­IS.”

Her ap­pear­ance was also de­signed to bol­ster her im­age as a po­ten­tial com­mand­er in chief after an un­even Demo­crat­ic de­bate last week in which she re­peatedly found her­self on the de­fens­ive over her past sup­port for the Ir­aq war and her re­cord as Obama’s sec­ret­ary of State. Dis­cuss­ing the fight against IS­IS, she de­clared in the de­bate, “This can­not be an Amer­ic­an fight.” On Thursday, she offered a more force­ful ap­proach, say­ing, “This is a world­wide fight—and Amer­ica must lead it.”

Clin­ton is walk­ing a fine line in try­ing to draw dis­tinc­tions with Obama, who re­mains over­whelm­ingly pop­u­lar among Demo­crat­ic primary voters, and ad­voc­at­ing a more ag­gress­ive ap­proach to a war-weary elect­or­ate. But last week’s at­tacks in Par­is, which killed 129 people and wounded hun­dreds more, seem to have re­ordered the polit­ic­al land­scape. Polls show that a large ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­ans—in­clud­ing the bulk of Demo­crats—feel the fight against IS­IS is go­ing badly, and the ter­ror­ist group now tops the list of con­cerns of voters.

A new Bloomberg poll re­leased Thursday, however, showed that Amer­ic­ans are sharply di­vided over wheth­er to send U.S. troops to Ir­aq and Syr­ia, with 44 per­cent for the idea and 45 per­cent against it. And on that count, Clin­ton echoed Obama, say­ing de­ploy­ment of ground troops is “not the smart move to make here.”

“If we have learned any­thing from 15 years of war in Ir­aq and Afgh­anistan, it is that loc­al people and na­tions have to se­cure their own com­munit­ies,” she said. “We can help them and we should, but we can­not sub­sti­tute for them.”

That stance sets up a stark con­trast with Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates, in­clud­ing former Flor­ida Gov. Jeb Bush, who are call­ing for send­ing more ground troops to fight the Is­lam­ic State.

She also drew dis­tinc­tions with her GOP rivals by stand­ing firm with Obama on help­ing refugees flee­ing war-torn Syr­ia. Sev­er­al Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates and a raft of the party’s gov­ernors have de­man­ded that the ad­min­is­tra­tion sus­pend plans to re­settle thou­sands of refugees, rais­ing con­cerns that ter­ror­ists could slip through the screen­ing pro­cess and at­tack the U.S. Some can­did­ates have sug­ges­ted that Chris­ti­an refugees should be giv­en pref­er­ence over Muslims.

While Clin­ton said the U.S. should be vi­gil­ant in screen­ing refugees and re­view ex­ist­ing safe­guards, she ad­ded, “We can­not al­low ter­ror­ists to in­tim­id­ate us in­to abandon­ing our val­ues and hu­man­it­ari­an ob­lig­a­tions. Turn­ing away orphans, ap­ply­ing a re­li­gious test, dis­crim­in­at­ing against Muslims, slam­ming the door on every single Syr­i­an refugee—that is just not who we are. We are bet­ter than that.”

Without nam­ing her Re­pub­lic­an op­pon­ents, she also cited some of their re­cent re­marks about the Is­lam­ic State and por­trayed them as reck­less and harm­ful to the over­all fight.

“The ob­ses­sion in some quar­ters with a ‘clash of civil­iz­a­tions’ or re­peat­ing the spe­cif­ic words ‘rad­ic­al Is­lam­ic ter­ror­ism’ is not just a dis­trac­tion, it gives these crim­in­als, these mur­der­ers, more stand­ing than they de­serve, and it ac­tu­ally plays in­to their hands by ali­en­at­ing part­ners we need by our side. Our pri­or­ity should be how to fight the en­emy,” Clin­ton said. “In the end, it didn’t mat­ter what kind of ter­ror­ist we called bin Laden, it mattered that we killed bin Laden.”

Ul­ti­mately, Clin­ton’s speech was about re­cast­ing and re­claim­ing a part of her leg­acy that had be­come a li­ab­il­ity. “I know how hard this is be­cause we have done it be­fore,” she said, talk­ing about her work as sec­ret­ary of State.

“We have to use every pil­lar of Amer­ic­an power—mil­it­ary might but also dip­lomacy, de­vel­op­ment aid, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al in­flu­ence, tech­no­logy, and the force of our val­ues,” she said. “That is smart power.”