If Bernie Sanders is aware that one of the main knocks against his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination is his lack of experience and expertise in foreign policy and national security issues, he sure didn’t show it in his interview with the New York Daily News editorial board, a transcript of which was published late Monday
The Vermont Senator, who has been lampooned for calling a reduction of income inequality the solution to a wide range of complex problems, has for months been in a battle with a frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, who brings four years a secretary of state to the table as part of the case she’s making to the voters.
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Sanders, whose focus has always been on domestic policy, doesn’t appear to have used that time to think over some of the major security and foreign policy issues confronting the country – like the Israel-Palestine conflict, the treatment of captured terrorists or the legality of drone strikes.
In a discussion with the editorial board about Israel, for example, he overstated the number of civilians killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip by a factor of four and refused to take a firm position on whether Israel should abandon settlements on Palestinian land, despite calling them “illegal.”
Asked if President Obama’s decision to take targeting authority for drone strikes away from the Central Intelligence Agency and vest it instead in the military was good policy or a hindrance to anti-terror efforts, he said:
“I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that drones are a modern weapon. When used effectively, when taking out ISIS or terrorist leaders, that's pretty impressive. When bombing wedding parties of innocent people and killing dozens of them, that is, needless to say, not effective and enormously counterproductive. So whatever the mechanism, whoever is in control of that policy, it has to be refined so that we are killing the people we want to kill and not innocent collateral damage.”
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Calling for fewer mistaken attacks on innocent civilians isn’t exactly evidence of deep thought on the question.
Sanders didn’t do much better when he was asked how he would handle captured terrorists, such as a hypothetical “ISIS commander.”
Sanders: Imprison him.
Daily News: Where?
Sanders: And try to get as much information out of him. If the question leads us to Guantanamo ...
Daily News: Well, no, separate and apart from Guantanamo, it could be there, it could be anywhere. Where would a President Sanders imprison, interrogate? What would you do?
Sanders: Actually I haven't thought about it a whole lot. I suppose, somewhere near the locale where that person was captured. The best location where that individual would be safely secured in a way that we can get information out of him.
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Again, for Sanders to admit at this point in the campaign that he hasn’t given much thought to one of the most contentious national security issues this country has faced in the post-9/11 era is at least surprising, if not troubling.
He is on the verge of winning his fourth primary in a row tonight, in Wisconsin. Sanders still trails Hillary Clinton badly in the delegate count, but he is now his party’s de facto back-up plan if the Clinton campaign implodes. But he’s not acting like it.
