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Clinton hones foreign policy credentials ahead of key primaries |
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By Aaron Blake
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Posted: 02/25/08 03:03 PM [ET] |
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) promised a measured and experienced foreign policy Monday, attempting to refocus the Democratic presidential contest with one week to go before two contests that could make or break her campaign.
Clinton noted important world events that have played out in the past week, including a change of leadership in Cuba and attacks on the U.S. embassy in Belgrade. Her policy speech took several shots at Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), but offered little departure from her previously stated policy positions and tacks.
She criticized Obama’s foreign policy speech from last year in which he said the United States should strike targets in Pakistan if embattled President Pervez Musharraf doesn’t crack down on terrorists there.
Flanked by Gen. Wesley Clark and former Veterans Affairs and Army Secretary Togo West, she also harped on the experience angle, comparing Obama to President Bush because he would enter the White House without major foreign policy experience.
“[Obama] wavers from seeming to believe that mediation and meetings without preconditions can solve some of the world’s most intractable problems to advocating rash unilateral military action without cooperation from our allies in a sensitive region of the world,” Clinton said.
She also talked tough on Pakistan, saying that “any terrorists who attack the United States who have safe haven in any country are putting that country at risk.”
Earlier in the day, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, speaking on behalf of the Obama campaign, said American foreign policy needs a new face and that Clinton is more of the same.
“In the very substance of policy, there’s an extent to which Sen. Clinton is trapped within an establishment view of the world and inevitably represents a kind of continuity in the activity of our foreign policy,” Danzig said.
Clinton’s speech comes just more than a week before March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas that are critical to her campaign. Former President Bill Clinton has said his wife must win these two contests to continue her campaign against Obama, who has not lost a contest since Super Tuesday.
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