Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton made the rounds this weekend, appearing on several of the Sunday morning talk shows from her home in Chappaqua, New York. Sporting a brown blazer on top of a green shirt, Senator Clinton was bubbly and boisterous, and at times confusing. Clinton made one puzzling statement on This Week, telling George Stephanopoulos “When my husband wanted to go and do what was necessary to end ethnic cleansing and to stop the spread of violence in Europe, he tried to get congressional approval and under the Republican Congress was unable to do so. He thought it important to put together a coalition for Bosnia and Kosovo, which he did.” I’m unclear as to which ethnic cleansing in Europe Clinton was itching to stop but the Republican Congress prevented. Surely it wasn’t the air war in Kosovo, which had wide, bipartisan support. Consider this headline from a CNN.com story back in 1999: “Clinton: Serbs must be stopped now; U.S. on verge of attack; divided Senate to unify on Kosovo mission.” Perhaps she’s referring to the Croatian ethnic cleansing of Serbs in 1995? I kind of doubt it; then-President Clinton was less than impressive in dealing with that situation. Here’s what Charles Krauthammer had to say about Clinton’s foreign policy dealings in a column summing up his administration’s standing in the humanitarian realm:
Anyway, it’s unclear to me exactly what Clinton was referring to. It would have been nice if Stephanopoulos would have pushed her on that statement. Over at Meet the Press, Clinton again refused to condemn MoveOn.org’s attack on General Petraeus when given the chance, instead demanding that all “attacks” on public officials’ patriotism be condemned.
On Fox News Sunday, Clinton tried to reemphasize her leftward swing on the war by pointing out that she’d cut off funding for the troops, regardless of how much danger it put them in, in order to end the conflict a little sooner.
