There hasn’t been a major foreign policy decision in the Middle East she pushed for that didn’t end up being a disaster both at home and the countries she advocated meddling in.
The most commonly cited “mistake” was her support for the Iraq war which is one of the main reasons she lost the nomination the first time around. But even if one excludes this. Even if one puts it into a memory hole and buries it, the choices she made after 2008 show she not only didn’t learn any lessons from that war but has only grown more bellicose and hawkish.
From her advocating regime change in Libya, to arming dubious opposition forces in Syria, to undermining peace with Iran -- Clinton has consistently been wrong on foreign policy even after her supposedly humbling loss of 2008.
Longtime Clinton ally Ann Marie Slaughter was asked on what achievements Clinton could point to as Secretary of State. Her answer?
Clinton's championing for regime change in Libya - a foreign policy “experience” that reduced Libya to a failed state run largely by ISIS and other jihadists.
One does not need even to look as far back as Libya in 2011 to see Clinton embracing reckless, hawkish positions in the Middle East. Clinton is called for a no-fly zone in Syria - an act that would have by definition, involved the US potentially shooting down not just Syrian planes but Russian ones as well. If this looks like regime change, that’s because it almost certainly is, According to one 2013 Defense Department estimate a no-fly zone over Syria would entail bombing Syrian military infrastructure and would require over 70,000 servicemen -- and this was before Russia entered the war.
Clinton attempted to weasel out of this neocon stance by insisting that implementing a no-fly zone in Syria would not require shooting down Russian planes because Russia would “join us”. This, to anyone who has a cursory understanding of the Syrian conflict, is absurd. Why would Russia betray its ally of 44 years and become a US client state?
Clinton’s “wonkish” posture is built primarily around using Presidential-sounding terms like “no fly zone” rather than bothering to make any sense. This is the product of someone looking to play a role rather than earnestly convey the complexities of the situation at hand.
The day the U.S. and Iran celebrated finally lifting sanctions that had crippled Iran for years, Clinton proposed more sanctions to look “tough” on Iran. And, again, what kind of message did this send the Iranians - whom Ms. Clinton says she’s proud to call “enemies?” Clinton nominally supported the Iran Deal (not doing so would certainly have been too far) but she took many opportunities to level passive aggressive criticism of it all while proposing even more sanctions on Iran, a position even former Iranian political prisoner Shane Bauer called “totally irresponsible”. In 2008 Clinton mocked Obama for saying he would talk directly to Iran, too.
On Iraq, on Libya, on proxy wars in Syria, on her support of Saudi and Egyptian tyrants, Clinton has frequently been on the disastrous and disabling side of history. “Experience,” Oscar Wilde once quipped, “is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”, and it’s increasingly clear that too many people have suffered from Clinton's experience for us to consider it anything other than a downside.
https://www.salon.com/2016/01/23/there_is_no_foreign_policy_d_league_hillarys_forei gn_policy_disastrous_experience_partner/
