http://lobelog.com/bernie-sanders-and-the-middle-east/#more-32799

Let’s Talk About Bernie Sanders and the Middle East

by Derek Davison
Foreign policy has taken a backseat to domestic issues in the Democratic primary thus far. There are two explanations for this. One is that the Democratic base simply doesn’t see foreign policy—apart from “terrorism,” which at least has a foreign policy component to it—as a key issue. The other is that neither of the party’s two realistic contenders (in other words, let’s leave Martin O’Malley out of this) has much to gain from any kind of detailed scrutiny of their own policies and records.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as Eli Clifton pointed out in this blog several days ago, is a hawk. Although she often touts her foreign policy experience in general terms and has been increasingly comfortable attacking Senator Bernie Sanders from the right on foreign policy issues in recent weeks, her overall foreign policy views are substantially to the right of the average Democratic primary voter. This stance will do little to hurt her (and may even help) in the general election against a Republican nominee who will surely be more hawkish. But for now, at a time when she can’t afford to alienate any potential primary voters, she has little to gain from a thorough foreign policy debate.
For Sanders, the issue is more straightforward. Foreign policy simply isn’t an area in which he’s particularly comfortable. Nor has he paid much attention to the matter until his candidacy really began to gain at the polls. When he comments on foreign policy at all, Sanders often steers the discussion to topics like inequality, which he frequently discusses in a domestic context, or to questions of judgment rather than specific policies. He has, for example, cited Clinton’s 2002 Senate vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq (Sanders, then in the House, voted against the authorization) as an example of her poor judgment (the same issue that played such a large role in Clinton’s 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama). He has even gone so far as to compare her to former Vice President Dick Cheney. Clinton’s usual response to this attack—that then-President-elect Obama obviously trusted her judgment enough to ask her to become his secretary of state—is somewhat blunted by an examination of her record in that office, which includes a disastrous intervention in Libya, a failed surge in Afghanistan, the now-defunct “reset” with Russia, and a muddled (at best) response to the Arab Spring. http://lobelog.com/bernie-sanders-and-the-middle-east/#more-32799