Does Hillary Clinton Have a Strategy to Defeat ISIS? Max Boot
URL to article: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/08/12/does-hillary-clinton-have-a-strategy-to-defeat-isis/
Jeb Bush caused some consternation among Democrats by suggesting that Hillary Clinton bears some of the blame for the dire situation that Iraq finds itself in today. In a larger foreign policy speech at the Reagan Library, Bush said:
“So why was the success of the surge followed by a withdrawal from Iraq, leaving not even the residual force that commanders and the joint chiefs knew was necessary? That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill – and that Iran has exploited to the full as well. ISIS grew while the United States disengaged from the Middle East and ignored the threat. And where was Secretary of State Clinton in all of this? Like the president himself, she had opposed the surge, then joined in claiming credit for its success, then stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away. In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly one time.”
This brought an outraged rejoined from Jacob Sullivan, formerly Clinton’s director of policy planning at the State Department and now a top campaign adviser. He said:
“It’s simply wrong to assert that ISIS arose from the vacuum after American troops left. ISIS grew out of al Qaeda in Iraq, and where did AQI come from? It didn’t exist before the invasion. It emerged in no small part as a result of President Bush’s failed strategy, and it gained strength by signing up former Sunni military officers, officers from the very army the Bush administration disbanded.”
Who’s right and wrong here?
Sullivan has a point when he says that ISIS grew out of AQI, and that AQI grew out of the vacuum of power the Bush administration created when it invaded Iraq without a serious plan or the necessary resources for what would happen after regime change. But of course, Clinton arguably shares in that mistake as well since she voted for the war effort (as her 2008 primary opponent, Senator Barack Obama, never got tired of reminding voters). Jeb is right, moreover, that the surge of 2007-2008 — which Clinton opposed, going so far as to belittle General David Petraeus and question his credibility — changed the situation dramatically and decimated AQI.
After the surge’s success, the situation in Iraq was so favorable that Vice President Joe Biden, for whom Sullivan once worked as national security adviser, said in 2010, “I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Why did Iraq veer off the positive path described by Biden? The obvious answer is that the pullout of American troops in 2011 created a vacuum that was filled by Shiite sectarians, which in turn led to a backlash among Sunnis. At virtually the same time a civil war was erupting in Syria, with the Obama administration doing nothing to intervene. That created another vacuum of power. Out of those two vacuums arose the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which certainly grew out of the remnants of AQI but became a new and far deadlier organization that is now able to control an area, as Bush noted, the size of Indiana.
It is hard to know exactly what role Hillary Clinton played in the colossal miscalculations of the Obama administration — first, not doing enough to keep US forces in Iraq and then not doing enough to help the moderates in the Syrian civil war. By some accounts, she was in favor of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq and of sending more aid to Syria, but she was overruled by the president. If that’s the case, she would be better off disassociating herself from Obama’s mistakes (even if it means revealing her relative lack of influence) rather than doubling down and trying to blame Jeb’s brother for the catastrophic state of Iraq and Syria more than six years after he left office. And, most importantly, Clinton needs to lay out her own strategy for fighting ISIS. If she is really more of a hard-liner than Obama, as widely rumored, then she needs to make that clear in her policy proposals. So far, she hasn’t.
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