Hilary Clinton blames US policy for rise of Islamist militants

Washington: Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton blamed the rise of Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria on failures of US policy, in an interview published on Sunday.
Clinton specifically faulted US decision to stay on the sidelines of the insurgency against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad as opening the way for the most extreme rebel faction, the Islamic State.
Clinton, widely considered an undeclared presidential candidate, was an unsuccessful advocate of arming the Syrian rebels when she was secretary of state during Obama’s first term.

Clinton, however, suggested in the interview that Obama lacked a strategy for dealing with the jihadist threat.

“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” she said referring to an Obama slogan.

She said United States must develop an ‘overarching’ strategy to confront Islamist extremism, likening it to the long US struggle against Soviet-led communism.

“One of the reasons why I worry about what’s happening in the Middle East right now is because of the breakout capacity of jihadist groups that can affect Europe, can affect United States,” she said.

“Jihadist groups are governing territory. They will never stay there, though. They are driven to expand. Their raison d’etre is to be against the West, against the Crusaders, against the fill-in-the-blank-and we all fit into one of these categories. How do we try to contain that? I’m thinking a lotbout containment, deterrence, and defeat,” she said.

Her arguments, seen as an attempt to distance herself from Obama, echoed those of Republican critics who accuse Obama of allowing a power vacuum to develop by failing to bring US leadership to bear in conflicts from Syria to Iraq to Ukraine.