Remember when folks, including myself, thought Hillary Clinton was a hawk?

Here’s her tune now: “Our goal is to disrupt, dismantle, defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies,” she said. “But not every Taliban is an extremist ally.”

Really? How many mushy moderate Taliban are out there? How many of them are we willing to trust that they’ll never host, assist, or protect al-Qaeda?

Here’s what she was saying in July:

SEC’Y CLINTON: Well, David, we had an intensive strategic review upon taking office. And we not only brought the entire United States government together, but we reached out to friends and allies, people with stakes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And as you know, the result of that strategic review was to conclude that al-Qaeda is supported by and uses its extremist allies like elements within the Taliban and other violent extremist groups in the region as well as worldwide to extend its reach, to be proxies for a lot of its attacks on Jakarta, Indonesia, and elsewhere. So that in order to really go after al-Qaeda, to uproot it and destroy it, we had to take on those who were giving the al-Qaeda leadership safe haven.
Now, as you know, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is permeable. There are movements back and forth across it. I think our new strategy, which has been endorsed by a very large number of nations, some of whom don’t agree with us on a lot of other things, is aimed at achieving our primary goal. And we also learned from Iraq, which were hard lessons, that in order to have our military intervention be effective, when they go in and try to clear areas of the extremists, we have to follow in to build up the capacity of the local community to defend itself and to be able to realize the benefits of those changes. This is a new strategy. It’s just beginning. I think the president believed that it was not only the right strategy but, facing what he faced, to withdraw our presence or to keep it on the low level limited effectiveness that had been demonstrated, would have sent a message to al-Qaeda and their allies that the United States was willing to leave the field to them. And in addition, importantly, we’ve seen the Pakistani government and military really step up, which had not happened to the extent it has now. So the Taliban, which is as, I believe strongly, part of a kind of terrorist syndicate with al-Qaeda at the center . . .
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
SEC’Y CLINTON: . . . is now under tremendous pressure, and I think that’s in America’s national interest.