White House says it welcomes Clinton’s Syria critique

The White House welcomes input from outside parties but is the one that has to make decisions at the end of the day, press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday, responding to criticism from former president Bill Clinton that Washington was dithering on Syria.

“Obviously, a lot of people who have expertise in the matter, both outside of Congress, in Congress, and inside government have perspective to add and opinions to contribute,” Carney said. “The president welcomes all that.”

But, Carney stressed, Obama and his team have to “make the decisions they believe are in the best interests of the United States.”

On Tuesday, in a disagreement that has caught the attention of the US political world, Clinton urged the Obama administration to show leadership and support the Syrian regime more robustly.

Politico reported that, during a closed session with Senator John McCain on the sidelines of an event for the McCain Institute for International Leadership in New York, Clinton warned that Obama might look like a “total fool” if he relies on public polling to craft his Syria policy.

“What the American people are saying when they tell you not to do these things, they’re not telling you not to do these things,” Clinton said. “They hire you to win … to look around the corner and see down the road.”

“I don’t mean that a leader should go out of his way or her way to do the unpopular thing,” Politico reported Clinton as saying, “I simply mean when people are telling you ‘no’ in these situations, very often what they’re doing is flashing a giant yellow light and saying, ‘For God’s sakes, be careful, tell us what you’re doing, think this through, be careful.’”

McCain recently visited war-ridden Syria and called on the international community to arm the Free Syrian Army, saying he was confident the weapons could be given to the right people.

“They just can’t fight tanks with AK-47s,” the senator said. “There’s no doubt that they need some kind of capability to reverse the battlefield situation, which right now is in favor of Assad.”

McCain also called for a no-fly zone in Syria.

Despite growing alarm over the Syrian government’s military advances, Obama administration officials are split over whether to arm the country’s rebel forces or make other military moves that would deepen US involvement in the conflict.

Obama’s top national security advisers met at the White House on Wednesday to air their differences. The administration’s caution persists despite its nearly two-year-old demand that President Bashar Assad step down, its vows to help the Syrian rebels on the ground and its threats to respond to any chemical weapons use.

Obama’s moves throughout the 27-month civil war, from political support for the opposition to nonlethal aid for its more moderate fighters, have occurred in close concert with America’s partners in Europe. All agree at this point that the efforts haven’t done enough.

Desperate for weapons, even more so with an estimated 5,000 Hezbollah guerrillas propping up Assad’s forces, the opposition is warning that Western inaction will mean that al-Qaeda-linked and other militants will increasingly take over the rebellion.

On Thursday, the United Nations human rights office said that, according to their figures, over 93,000 Syrians have died in the brutal civil war there.

Aaron Kalman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.