Clinton Touts Foreign Policy Experience
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Detailing a world facing "global poverty, global warming and global health pandemics," and "countries rushing to acquire nuclear weapons," Sen. Hillary Clinton, while not naming Sen. Barack Obama, suggested that electing her top rival would lead to the kind of foreign policy problems she believes have defined the Bush administration.
"We've seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," Clinton said in a foreign policy speech at George Washington University. "We cannot let that happen again. America has already taken that chance one time too many."
She added, "The American people don't have to assess whether I understand the issues or whether I would need a foreign policy instruction manual to guide me through a crisis."
She did criticize Obama by name while mentioning the Illinois senator's campaign statements that he would meet leaders of rogue countries like North Korea without preconditions and that he would consider an attack on Pakistan if it would not cooperate in the war on terrorism.
"He wavers from seeming to believe that mediation and meetings without preconditions solves the world's most intractable problems to advocating rash, unilateral military action," Clinton said in front of a crowd of more than 100 in a small room on the university's campus. "In this moment of peril and promise, we need a president who is tested and ready."
Her criticisms of Obama are familiar, although they have grown more pointed in recent days as Clinton views coming primaries in Texas and Ohio as must wins. The speech appeared a preview of a debate on Tuesday in Cleveland, where Clinton has suggested she will take on Obama more directly than in last week's debate in Austin.
Posted at 2:25 PM ET on Feb 25, 2008
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She is vastly more qualified than her empty suited, wet behind the big ears, full of empty elequent words, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama.
Posted by: MrPappy | February 25, 2008 03:06 PM
Hillary has some experience, that is for sure, however Obama is no rookie. As a matter of a fact, he has lived all over the world.
Click on the Google chart in this link:
http://newsusa.myfeedportal.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=47
Then, change the region from "United States" to "All Regions" and you will see that people the world over are looking into (searching about) Barack and way more-so than Hillary. (And the world loves former president Clinton.) That says something. The man is no dummy, no matters what his middle name is.
Posted by: davidmwe | February 25, 2008 03:16 PM
I'm not buying her argument.
If Hillary is better on foreign policy than Barack, as she claims she is, why did the Democrats Abroad vote for Barack?
Posted by: ericp331 | February 25, 2008 03:24 PM
Very good point ericp331.
Posted by: davidmwe | February 25, 2008 03:26 PM
MrPappy's comment regarding Senator Obama's middle name is the same racist attacks that have been coming from the Clintons all along. They are horrible people that will stop at nothing to discredit a fine American. This is no different than the Clinton campaign sending that photo to Drudge and then having the nerve to deny it. The Clinton campaign is desperate and shameless.
Posted by: begwin | February 25, 2008 03:37 PM
I just split my side from laughing so hard.
Hillary's foreign policy experience is limited to American's feeling that any policy coming from her is foreign.
Experience? The same as the White House Pastry Chef, who happened to have more experience living outside the USA than the misguided wife of a former president.
Posted by: Guilden_NL | February 25, 2008 03:42 PM
"Clinton views coming primaries in Texas and Ohio as must wins"
It sure would be nice if the Washington Post published the work of reporters who didn't fantasize they were able to read minds.
Posted by: zukermand | February 25, 2008 03:50 PM
Of course this report does represent an exponential improvement over the "work" regularly produced here by Anne Kornblut and Shailagh Murray. Perhaps this represents progress.
Posted by: zukermand | February 25, 2008 03:53 PM
Bullpuckey. What foreign policy experience is she referring to? Certainly, not her own, as she just doesn't have the record in the senate to support that statement. What she's referring to, perhaps, are the largely attrocious policies of her husband, who presided over possibly 2 of the worst genocides in the last 30 years (Rwanda, Serbia/Kosovo) and did nothing except lob some ineffective missiles at Afghanistan following the bombing of the world trade center.
Sure, Clinton 1 got Yassif Arrafat and Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands (a momentous, but unfortunately unlasting, event) and helped the Northern Irish to establish a political peace; but those accomplishments took the same kind of strategies that Obama embraces--dialogue, diplomacy, cultural understanding, etc., etc.
If her husband's experience is what she's talking about, then anyone else who has access to a history book or who, gasp, lived through it (or both, in the case of Obama, who lived through all of it AND studied the events), has that same "experience." Nevermind that this purported experience didn't do squat for her judgement when it came time to stand up for the right thing and say NO to a factually unfounded, unnecessary, poorly-planned, invasion of Iraq. OR at the very least, if she did think that an invasion was the right thing, think about the after-math of the event and what might happen if you remove a government without having the rule-of-law established to replace it immediately after the fact.
Posted by: emmydoll81 | February 25, 2008 04:04 PM
correction: "Yassir". typo.
Posted by: emmydoll81 | February 25, 2008 04:11 PM
McCain talks about having troops in Iraq for up to 100 years. He qualifies his statement by noting the length of time we have had troops in Japan, Korea, and Germany. His statements suggest he does not understand the cold war is over - that we do not have the responsibility of being the world's policeman.....
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/02/26/mccains-100-year-war/
Posted by: glclark4750 | February 25, 2008 04:30 PM
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