After Paris, Clinton squanders her chance to be the hawk of the night

Hillary Clinton actually said it twice.

Asked by CBS moderator John Dickerson about the threat from the Islamic State and whether it had been “underestimated” by the Obama administration, she replied: “It cannot be an American fight” — a sound bite that seemed made to order for Republican attack ads.

Yes, she said, IS “must be defeated.” The U.S. must help “build back” the Iraqi army. We must work with the Kurds and Arab countries.

“But this cannot be an American fight,” Clinton said again, “although American leadership is essential.”

Clinton was supposed to be the hawk in this debate. As secretary of state, she had pushed for U.S. military intervention in Libya, bucked up President Obama in his decision to kill Osama bin Laden and supported arming Syrian rebels to get rid of Bashar Assad.

But the evening after the worst terrorist attack in the West since 9/11 — a brazen, mass-casualty attack on the streets of Paris that has spooked U.S. counterterrorism officials and prompted even some Democrats (like Sen. Dianne Feinstein) to demand that the U.S. ramp up the fight to take the terror group out — Clinton somehow managed to come off as the most dovish of the three candidates on the stage, at least rhetorically.

Martin O’Malley immediately disagreed with Clinton, saying, “This actually is America’s fight.” Even Bernie Sanders seemed at first to go further than Clinton: “Americans … are shocked and disgusted by what we saw in Paris yesterday,” he said. “Together, leading the world, this country will rid our planet of this barbarous organization called ISIS.”

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In the end, none of the three candidates actually disagreed on substance about what to do about IS, also known as ISIS. Nobody on the stage called for sending in U.S. troops. All three talked about enlisting the Muslim countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to step up to the plate. O’Malley talked about improving “human intelligence” — without actually saying how that should be done. Sanders talked about the dangers of regime change, and managed to bring up U.S. efforts to topple regimes in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s and Chile in the 1970s — not to mention Clinton’s 2002 vote for the Iraq War.

But this was Clinton’s chance to showcase her toughness and position herself to take on a GOP foe next year who is sure to hammer her (and President Obama) on national security grounds. But Clinton oddly seemed to downgrade America’s role in the war against the country’s biggest terror threat. Later, she also balked at saying the magic words “radical Islam,” a flashpoint for many Republican critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.

However it played in tonight’s Democratic debate, it was a cautious stand that could come back to haunt her next year.

(Cover tile photo: Jim Young/Reuters)