Terrorism: Hillary’s comments draw fire

NEW YORK -- A statement by Senator Hillary Clinton last week -- that "you can't lump all terrorists together"—has triggered widespread speculation that the US presidential candidate may be implicitly making a distinction between good terrorists and bad terrorists.

Hillary Clinton

"And I think we've got to do a much better job of clarifying what are the motivations, the raisons d'etre of terrorists," she said in an interview with the London Guardian. Asked to clarify, Phil Singer of 'Hillary Clinton for President' campaign told The Sunday Times: "Any suggestion that Senator Clinton was making that kind of distinction is flat out wrong."

He said there was a "misunderstanding" of what Ms. Clinton said. And the speculation was "off base". "She was not making any judgments. What she was saying was that it was important to understand their motivations, whether they had a political, economic or a religious agenda," Singer said.

In an interview with the Guardian, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for next year's US presidential elections was quoted as saying that terrorism is "a tool that has been utilized throughout history to achieve certain objectives. Some have been ideological and others territorial."

There were personality-driven terroristic objectives, she pointed out. "The bottom line is, you can't lump all terrorists together."
"What the Tamil Tigers are fighting for in Sri Lanka, or the Basque separatists in Spain, or the insurgents in al-Anbar province may only be connected by tactics. They may not share all that much in terms of what is the philosophical or ideological underinning," Ms. Clinton said.

"And I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which has not been particularly helpful in understanding what it is we were up against when it comes to those who pursue terrorism for whichever ends they're seeking," she added.