There was no better example of Hillary's clueless hawkishness than this moment in the recent debate.

“We now finally are where we need to be,” Clinton said. “We have a strategy and a commitment to go after ISIS, which is a danger to us as well as the region. And we finally have a U.N. Security Council Resolution bringing the world together to go after a political transition in Syria.”
... Both of her opponents argued that the U.S. should focus on destroying ISIS instead of deposing Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
“I wish it could be either/or. I wish we could say yes, let’s go destroy ISIS and let’s let Assad continue to destroy Syria, which creates more terrorists, more extremists by the minute,” Clinton said in response to her opponents.

So Hillary Clinton continues to support both eliminating ISIS and regime change in Syria at the same time, just like her Republican opponents.
The most important thing that Hillary didn't say was who was going to run Syria after ISIS and Assad were gone. Consider this study from yesterday.

About a third of rebel groups in Syria - some 100,000 fighters - share the ideology of so-called Islamic State (IS), new research suggests.
The Centre on Religion and Geopolitics, linked to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, said defeating IS militarily "would not end global jihadism".
That would require an "intellectual and theological defeat" of its ideology.

A third of Syria's rebels share the ideology of ISIS, and 60% share their goals. That's nearly 200,000 of the most effective rebels in this fight.

In concrete terms, what the think-tank is saying is that if the Islamic State is defeated there are "at least 65,000 fighters belonging to other Salafi-jihadi groups ready to take its place."

Think about that for a moment.
If we somehow managed to kill every last ISIS jihadist tomorrow, at least as many jihadist militants would be able to step into their shoes and continue the fight.
This fact doesn't even enter into our political rhetoric, much less our military strategy.
Fewer than a quarter of the rebels are not driven by ideology, and even that faction is on the verge of collapse according to Stars and Stripes.

Let's look at the rest of Hillary's statement concerning the political solution about a transition government in Syria.
It's true that there was a U.N. resolution recently, A resolution that leaves the Assad question unaddressed and huge, gaping questions.
The reason for those questions is that almost no Syrian has been part of the peace talks so far, and the few that were there have rejected what has been said.

In other words, the peace process has been political kabuki. Nowhere was that more obvious than the inclusion of Ahrar al-Sham.

A key objective of the conference was apparently to bring Ahrar al-Sham, the most powerful opposition military force apart from the Islamic State (IS), into the putative game of ceasefire negotiations. But inviting the organization was bound to backfire sooner or later. Ahrar al-Sham has been closely allied with al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, al-Nusra Front, both politically and militarily. Moreover, it has explicitly denounced the idea of any compromise with the regime in Damascus.

The Obama Administration trying to portray Ahrar al-Sham as some sort of "moderate" rebel force is just sad.
Most of the group's senior leadership has ties to al-Qaeda, including one who was simultaneously serving in Ahrar al-Sham and as al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s representative in the Levant. Human Rights Watch has documented Ahrar al-Sham engaging in mass killings of Alawite villagers in the Latakia countryside.
Sitting on the same side of the negotiating table as Ahrar al-Sham is obviously inspired by desperation because of the lack of real moderate alternatives. Just a little over a year ago the Obama Administration was bombing these very same rebels because they were considered extremists.

Besides Ahrar al-Sham, another jihadist group, Jaysh al-Islam, is also part of the peace talks. Just a month earlier they were parading Alawite women in cages around Damascus. Many consider the group simply an Ahrar al-Sham off-shoot.
Both groups have rejected any negotiated settlement.

There is one major moderate rebel group in Syria that is interested in a negotiated settlement: the Syrian Kurds. However, they've been specifically excluded.

International Failure

This hopelessly, obviously, flawed political strategy in Syria that Hillary endorses can be seen elsewhere.
Consider Libya.
Hillary Clinton once wanted credit for overthrowing Gaddafi in 2011, but she is now dodging responsibility.
How bad have things gone in Libya? British, American, and French militaries are getting ready for a new bombing campaign in Libya. This time it will be to stop ISIS from seizing Libya's oil terminals.
You have to wonder what legal authority would allow for this dramatic expansion of the war on ISIS?

The failure here is one of politics, not a military one.
Peace cannot be achieved from bombs. Foreign policy, especially in the middle east, is not a game of Call of Duty.
You don't get points from just killing people, unless you are prepared to start making towers of skulls like Tamerlane.
If you want to be on the road to peace and victory, then you have to do something about the politics of the region. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Iraq.

American commanders have been hailing the advance of the retrained Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) on Ramadi, the key city where they were easily routed some 18 months ago by marauding fighters of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
But what they aren’t saying—and are loath to concede, according to well-informed military sources in Washington—is that the security forces of the Iran-backed regime in Baghdad largely consist of Shiite fighters in league with murderous militias that have slaughtered innocent Sunnis after ousting ISIS militants from Tikrit and other battlegrounds in the past year. Ramadi is the capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province, and the Shiites are ready to pounce.

We may soon see ISIS be defeated in Ramadi, but what would that gain us if tens of thousands of Sunnis are ethnically cleansed in the process?
Backing the Shia militias comes at an enormous price. Every significant victory during that the Shia militias have managed against the Daesh militants has been accompanied with ethnic cleansing and targeted assassinations.

Amerli in September of 2014
Jurf al-Sakhar in October of 2014 (with update)
Villages north of Baghdad in December of 2014
Tikrit in April of this year
The Ramadi offensive was originally named "Labaik ya Hussein", a slogan in honor of a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed killed in the 7th Century battle that led to the schism between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims.

The Obama Administration is loudly denying that the Shia militias are leading this offensive, but their presence really isn't up for debate.

“They are in denial,” he says of the administration’s pronouncement. But he adds that since “U.S. military reporting depends on ISF reports, it does not surprise me.” The ISF, which include army, police and Ministry of Interior units, “are nearly wholly owned by Shia loyalists, whether PMU now as part of MOI or as Shia loyalists in the Army,” he says.

The failure we are making in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere is the same mistake we made in Vietnam - blinding ourselves to the flaws of our allies for domestic political reasons. The thing is that, those flaws matter, even when we ignore them.

But the United States has repeatedly airbrushed the brutal excesses of the Shiite militias, which have included “looting, abductions and murder,” according to a special Reuters investigation published in December. “Washington, seeking to defeat Sunni jihadists and stabilize Iraq, has consistently overlooked excesses by Shi’ite militias sponsored by the Iraqi government,” the report says. “The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both worked with Badr and its powerful leader, Hadi al-Amiri, whom many Sunnis continue to accuse of human rights abuses.”

The 2007 Surge under President Bush was designed to buy time for political reconciliation between the Shia and Sunni communities in Iraq.
That political reconciliation never happened despite a massive, peaceful protest movement in 2012-2013.
Now we are focusing entirely on defeating ISIS, while putting little effort into political reconciliation and failed reforms, probably dooming us to the same outcome.

This lack of political reforms translates directly into a losing war effort.

For instance, the Iraqi army has consistently failed to perform against ISIS despite having huge advantages in numbers and weapons. Why?
Iraq was the 5th most corrupt country in the entire world. Would you risk you life on the orders of a superior who was stealing from you?
The Afghan army fled Kunduz a few months ago despite a massive advantage in numbers over the Taliban. Why?
Afghanistan in one of the few countries in the world even more corrupt than Iraq. Would you risk you life defending the worst narco state in history?
This same lesson played out in Vietnam in the 1970's and is happening again with the Free Syrian Army today.

The Taliban and ISIS jihadists have ideas that they think are worth dying for. Our Iraqi and Afghan allies don't.
I'm not talking about theoretical ideas from a book or a TV show. I'm talking about ideas that mean something in their day-to-day lives.
The jihadists have it and we don't. It's as simple as that.
Everything else is just teenage make-believe, and that's our current level of political debate.