In her last presidential debate of the year, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday, Dec. 19 that she understood better than anyone what it meant to build coalitions in the Middle East. Mrs. Clinton insisted that without removing Assad it would be impossible to win the fight against ISIS because of the war crimes he is inflicting against his own people, causing the conditions that allow ISIS to recruit Sunni Muslims.
Clinton argued the two action can and should happen concurrently.
“I think we’re missing the point here,” said Clinton. “We are doing both at the same time.”
Both Clinton and Sanders cautioned against sending ground troops en masse to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State at their final Democratic presidential debate of the year.
“I think it’s absolutely the wrong policy for us to be even imagining that we are going to end up putting tens of thousands of troops into Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS,” Clinton said.
Although, Clinton voiced support for President Obama’s decision to dispatch Special Operations forces to the region and warned that a large U.S. ground force would play into the enemy’s hands.