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The most aggressive of her claims, that Obama's unwillingness to give support to the Syrian rebels has led to the rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) -- is not true. The US and allies have supported the rebels, though the exact numbers and means are unknown as the operations have been mostly covert. The policy was mistaken from the start: it has contributed to more than 160,000 dead in Syria, and in fact helped to open the way for ISIS to threaten both Syria and Iraq. This failure is both Clinton's and Obama's, and to this day is obscured in a cloud of lies and deceit.

Here is what we know. When the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the US foreign policy and intelligence establishment was caught flat-footed, without any warning, anticipation or policy. Our policy in the Middle East was wholly reactive, and the one glimmer of an initiative -- Obama's Cairo Speech in June 2009 -- proved to be empty words without any follow up.
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Defeatism infects the Democratic Party's bloodstream. This affliction is systemic and chronic. It has spread through every limb and organ of the party from the White House to towns across America. The ulterior source is a political lifestyle dating back to the Reagan years of passivity as the Republicans aggressively seized the commanding heights of the nation's political discourse. That well orchestrated, all-out offensive had several fronts: the media, the think tanks, the foundations, high finance, school boards and local organizations. Democrats became observers of their own marginalization or, worse, entered into the gradual but inexorable process of accommodating themselves to the New Thinking. They became an accessory to this silent revolution in the country's political life.

Democrats still win elections -- at great cost. The party has abandoned its historic constituencies, allowed the radically reactionary opposition to set the agenda and to define the issues. Victories are hollow. A Democratic President, Bill Clinton, pronounced "the era of big government is over." He let loose the locusts of financial predation on the land. He and Hillary hobnob with the Wall Street barons. He promotes the Bowles-Simpson assault on Social Security, Medicare and federal social problems of all sorts. Barack Obama, the glamorous champion of renewal, began his second day in the White House putting a depressed economy's fate in the hands of those who had pillaged and crippled it. He gave them all E-Z passes. He set as his administration's centerpiece a bizarre health insurance plan cooked-up by the ultra-Right American Heritage Foundation. Obamacare might rightly be called Heritage Care. He embraced austerity. He appointed Bowles-Simpson after first proposing to Congress even more dire threats to social spending. He promoted the "sequester" that has achieving the perennial Republican objective of downsizing government. He has launched a campaign against public schools and public universities. He has drastically undermined the most basic civil liberties in blatant ways. He has pressed a draconian program for expelling undocumented immigrants that tears apart families all the while pledging humane treatment.