US Democratic presidential candidate hopeful Bernie Sanders on Saturday accused rival presidential candidate hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton of being too quick to support regime change in Syria at a debate dominated by national security issues and how best to defeat the Islamic State militants.
The two leading candidates for next year’s US Democratic presidential nomination, joined by former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, also clashed over gun control, an issue that has resurfaced after a series of mass shootings this year culminating in the Dec. 2 killings of 14 people in San Bernardino, California by two radicalized Muslims.
Sanders, seeking to bite into Clinton’s big lead in polls of US Democratic voters, criticized the former secretary of state for supporting the speedy departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has resisted all diplomatic efforts to leave power with a civil war raging in his nation and swathes of territory controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Photo: Reuters
“Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be,” Sanders said during the ABC debate. “Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.”
“Regime change is easy. Getting rid of dictators is easy, but before you do that, you’ve got to think about what happens the day after,” said Sanders, a democratic socialist.
Clinton, the front-runner for next year’s US Democratic presidential nomination, rejected the criticism and pointed out that Sanders as a US senator from Vermont had voted “for regime change with respect to Libya” in 2011.
And she disagreed with Sanders’ assertion that the US military should prioritize the fight against the Islamic State over working to get al-Assad to leave power, saying both should be done at the same time.
“We will not get the support on the ground in Syria to dislodge ISIS if the fighters there — who are not associated with ISIS, but whose principal goal is getting rid of Assad — don’t believe there is a political diplomatic channel that is ongoing. We now have that,” Clinton said.
“It’s very important we operate on both at the same time,” she said.
The gun control issue was pressed by O’Malley, who is far behind in the polls and needs to shake up a race increasingly tilting against him with six weeks to go until Iowa holds the first nominating contest on Feb. 1. He accused his opponents of adopting a more aggressive stance on gun control in the wake of this year’s mass shootings.
O’Malley also said that the Islamic State militants have advised recruits that the best way to get a weapon in the US is at a gun show where rules are more lenient on the purchase of a firearm. This is a result, he said, of “flip-flopping” by Sanders and Clinton.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Martin,” Sanders said.
“Let’s tell the truth, Martin,” Clinton said.
Sanders said he had lost an election in Vermont for a gun-control stance and Clinton said she had backed gun-control measures.
The Democrats’ third debate was marked by controversy from the start over a recent data breach of Clinton’s campaign voter files by a Sanders staffer, who was subsequently fired.
Sanders apologized to Clinton for the breach.
“Yes, I apologize,” he said when asked about the controversy during the debate, but he renewed his criticism of the Democratic National Committee for freezing access to his own voter files until the issue was resolved late on Friday.
Clinton, whose campaign said Sanders made a number of breaches into Clinton computer files, accepted the apology and said it was time to move on.
“I very much appreciate that comment, Bernie,” she said. “Now that I think we’ve resolved your data, we’ve agreed on an independent inquiry, we should move on. I don’t think the American people are all that interested in this,” she said.
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