A Double-Edged Sword for Clinton on Foreign Policy

Some 129 Parisian dead elbowed their way into the second Democratic presidential debate Saturday night, forcing a last-minute rewrite of the forum’s focus toward questions of terrorism and national security and drawing a moment of silence from the three remaining candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and ex-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

But the candidates offered few specific remedies for battling the Islamic State, which early Saturday claimed responsibility for Friday’s terrorism spree in the French capital. All three said that the United States cannot battle Islamist extremism alone and must depend on cooperation from allies in Europe and the Middle East. Then they quickly tacked back toward more wheelhouse issues such as the economy, immigration, and health care.

When foreign-policy questions did rear their head, Clinton sought to parlay her experience while trying to sidestep self-laid land mines, from lingering questions over her email account (and the Benghazi consulate attack) to her hawkish stance on Libya and the ensuing chaos. Sanders tried to claw off a lee shore, apparently uncomfortable with the role of commander in chief. O’Malley said his experience as mayor of Baltimore and later as governor of Maryland did not prepare him for the kinds of crises a president might face.

All three candidates did seek to distinguish themselves from the Republican field by arguing that America should not build walls against the threat of terrorism, and they advocated for broad-based immigration reform.

Asked if she agreed with French President François Hollande’s declaration of war against the Islamic State, which he made in the wake of the Paris attacks, Clinton said she believes that the United States possesses sufficient legal scope to confront the extremist group without issuing a formal declaration of war. But she said the 14-year-old legal authority should be revised and expanded for what has become a wider war.

“This cannot be an American fight, although American leadership is essential,” Clinton said during the debate at Drake University, in Iowa.

The debate’s nominal focus on national security in some respects played to Clinton’s strengths, given her experience. But her service in President Barack Obama’s administration has left open flanks that Sanders, in particular, sought to exploit. Clinton’s vote for the 2003 Iraq invasion as a senator and her advocacy for armed intervention in Libya in 2011 as secretary of state, Sanders said, contributed to the rise of the Islamic State and the chaos today wracking the region.

“The invasion of Iraq led to the massive level of instability we are seeing right now,” he charged. “I’m not a great fan of regime change.”

In response, Clinton ticked off decades of attacks on Americans, from the Beirut bombings of 1983 to the 1998 al Qaeda obliteration of the U.S. embassies in East Africa. But when pressed by John Dickerson, the CBS debate moderator, as to whether Clinton and the Obama administration hadn’t underestimated the Islamic State — Obama called it terrorism’s “JV team”– Clinton fingered former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“I don’t think that the United States has the bulk of the responsibility,” she said, noting that early on she’d advocated arming moderate rebels in Syria.

All the candidates on the stage sought to distinguish themselves from Republican rivals with regard to Islam and the threat posed by radical jihadis. Speaking after the Paris terrorist attacks, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) characterized the fight against the Islamic State as “a clash of civilizations. And either they win, or we win.” Ben Carson has faced criticism for suggesting that a Muslim American would be unfit to serve as president of the United States. Donald Trump has railed against immigrants and the threat posed by the Islamic State.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) seized on the Paris attacks to denounce proposals to allow thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States. “President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s idea that we should bring tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees to America: It is nothing less than lunacy,” he told Fox News on Saturday.

“I don’t think we are at war with Islam,” said Clinton at the debate. “I don’t think we are at war with all Muslims. I think we are at war with jihadists.” She said she supports allowing properly vetted Syrian refugees into the country.

O’Malley voiced his support for resettling 65,000 vetted Syrian refugees and lashed out at “immigrant-bashing, carnival barker” Trump. America’s “symbol is the Statue of Liberty; it is not a barbed-wire fence,” he said.

Sanders, for his part, reiterated that he views climate change as potentially the greatest national security threat to the United States, fueling terrorism around the world. Climate-driven droughts have been linked to unrest in Syria, and many former U.S. military leaders agree that climate change exacerbates U.S. security challenges.

The debate, at the end, underscored that Democrats, even Clinton, are more comfortable talking about the minimum wage, health-care premiums, or college tuition than the nuts and bolts of confronting another decade in the seemingly never-ending war against Islamist terrorism. The extent to which pocketbook issues, rather than images of bloody concert halls, weigh on voters’ minds one year from now will go some way to determining whether the Islamic State’s massacre in Paris will ultimately mark a turning point in the American presidential election, or just another sad footnote.

Photo credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images