Hillary Clinton Backs Obama's 'Very Clear Explanation' For Syria Airstrikes
Clinton, the Democratic front-runner to replace Obama in 2016, on Wednesday praised Obama's "very clear explanation and robust defense of the action he has ordered" for airstrikes against the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in Syria, according to CNN.
Obama announced the strikes the day before, and some have criticized the act as illegal without congressional authorization. However, Clinton reportedly had nothing but praise for the move.
"The situation now is demanding a response and we are seeing a very robust response," Clinton said at the annual gathering of her family's Clinton Global Initiative. "It is something that I think the president is right to bring the world['s] attention to."
Obama and Clinton, his former secretary of state, have not always seen eye-to-eye on the Syria issue. After ISIS made sudden gains in Syria and Iraq, Clinton made her first big break from Obama's foreign policy record in August by arguing he should have embraced her suggestion to arm moderate Syrian rebels.
"I think you can always argue back and forth. Certainly when I was in the administration we had some very good discussion, debates even on what to do and how to do it starting in Syria," she told the CGI conference Wednesday. "I was on one side of the debate, others were on other side."
But she also insisted it was time to move on.
"Whatever the debates might have been before, this is a threat to the region and beyond," Clinton said. "I can't sit here today and tell you that if we had done what I had recommended we would be in a very different position. I just can't. You can't go and prove a negative."