Hillary Clinton Condemns Obama's Foreign Policy 'Failure' In Syria

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned President Barack Obama's "failure" to help Syrian rebels, saying such a foreign policy misstep has led to the growing power of the Islamic State militant group in eastern Syria in the past month.

Clinton, who is widely considered to be a contender for the 2016 presidential race, made her comments in a recent interview with The Atlantic, in which she argued that the U.S. failed to help build a credible fighting opposition to Syria's government regime run by President Bashar al-Assad. Now, because the U.S. failed to help Syrian citizens form a fighting force, jihadist groups like the Islamic State have been able to gain power, Clinton argued. 

"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," Clinton told The Atlantic.

The president previously said that it would have been impossible for the U.S. to equip Syrian citizens with enough weapons and training for them to effectively fight Assad's professionally-trained army. The president told The Atlantic back in February that those who though the U.S. could aid ground forces without putting troops in Syria "misunderstand the nature of the conflict in Syria and the conditions on the ground there."

"When you have a professional army that is well-armed and sponsored by two large states who have huge stakes in this, and they are fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict -- the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn't commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true."

Political pundits are seeking to analyze Clinton's recent comments against the president, arguing that it is the former secretary of state's attempt to distance herself from Obama's foreign policy ahead of the 2016 election. As Politico reports, sources close to the recent Atlantic interview argue that it is more likely Clinton was promoting her new memoir, Hard Choices, with her statements, rather than trying to make any advancements for the election, over two years away.