What Hillary Clinton wants you to forget: Her disastrous record as a war hawk

[Motown_Johnny]

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/10/what_hillary_clinton_wants_you_to_forget_her_disastrous_record_as_a_war_hawk/

^snip^


Clinton gave her support to the Iran deal yesterday, but she also talked like someone ready to start dropping bombs


Hillary Clinton announced her support for Obama’s Iran deal in a speech on Wednesday. It wasn’t exactly an act of huge political bravery. The deal is happening. It’s secured enough support from Democrats in the Senate to doom any attempts to block it. If Clinton had done anything other than endorsed the deal, she would have created a major headache for herself.

Even so, her speech about the deal highlighted what ought to be–but probably won’t be–a deeply examined part of her ideology: her hyper-hawkishness.

In the speech, Clinton spent most of her time “talking tough,” as they say. She flatly declared that the deal did not signal “some larger diplomatic opening” and insisted that she would “not hesitate to take military action if Iran tries to obtain a nuclear weapon.” (If the president of Iran casually threatened to bomb the United States, there would be hell to pay, but no matter.) She also pledged to to arm the already-well-stocked Israel even further, and to expand the American military presence around Iran. Never mind that multiple American intelligence estimates have concluded that Iran suspended its quest for a nuclear weapon long ago; we can always use more ships in the Middle East.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Bernie can lean on His, She has to Hide hers at every turn, Why won't people acknowledge that . n/t

[Thinkingabout]

2. I don't forget Hillary's record on being a war hawk and I don't forget Sanders

record on being a war hawk.

[JonLeibowitz]

5. Uh huh. You're selling, nobody is buying. N/t

[daleanime]

7. Oh, no. How dare he.....

not cut the funding for our troops in combat.

[Motown_Johnny]

11. I thought you people were attacking him for being a Pacifist?

So he is a pacifist and a war hawk?



Isn't it possible that he is a reasonable person who makes decisions based on the situation at hand?

He voted against the Iraq war, but he voted to fund the troops.

Someone who does not want to sail into a hurricane can still batten down the hatches without approving of the course that has been set.



There is no evidence at all that Bernie is a war hawk. Your post is dishonest.

[orpupilofnature57]

13. It's ambiguous like their candidates positions on the TPP, Same sex marriage and you fill in the

immense blanks leftover.

[Thinkingabout]

23. It does not change the fact of his votes, Hillary also made decisions based

On the situations. Sanders voted to bomb Kosovo and to go into Afghanistan, he voted for the 2001 AUMF which authorized military action.

[Fawke Em]

32. He didn't bust a gut laughing about a failure in Libya.

Never thought he was a pacifist, but he doesn't think we need to burn the entire Middle East, either.

[BeanMusical]

33. +1

[Spitfire of ATJ]

39. When you throw rights and lefts like that it looks like you're drowning.

[pangaia]

51. LOL !!!

[polly7]

3. Libya. nt.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

4. Honduras. nt

[JonLeibowitz]

6. Haiti.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

10. And a close friendship with The King of Extrajudicial Death, Henry Kissinger tops it all off. nt.

[daleanime]

8. K&R.....

[tularetom]

9. She would have already panicked and nuked Iran in response to the capture of the US sailors

She seems desperate to prove to people like McCain and all the big brass in the Pentagon that she is "tough", and she doesn't appear to consider the long term consequences of her actions.

If she gains the nomination, she will have to move to the right in order to get moderate voters and to do so, she will have to paint Obama as an appeaser, and when she does, she will lose all that support from black voters that we hear so much about daily here on DU.

But I don't think its an act. Look at her reaction to the success of the Sanders campaign. Attack, attack, attack. Same way she would respond to an incident.

Sorry, I think she lacks the poise and maturity to be POTUS in such a critical time. She wouldn't be any better than one of the republicans when it comes to foreign policy.

[Motown_Johnny]

12. She might have tried to invade, since we would still have armies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No way she would have pulled us out of those quagmires the way Obama did.

[libdem4life]

15. Some of this probably is in some way linked to her gender...women are not judged

the same way men are. The ritual "drawing of blood" looms in every administration and women of our age Know that we must compensate for our traditional roles in the Patriarchy, should we not "bake cookies" as a role. It is much easier to judge a woman as being weak.

That being said and in addition, I, too, think she would be way to quick to pull a trigger...most any trigger...to prove her "leadership".

[Proserpina]

20. After Bloody Maggie Thatcher, Golda Meir, Catherine the Great, how can you say that?

The only reason more women don't get around to it is they are overburdened with 2, 3 or more other jobs...

[libdem4life]

44. You missed the point.

[tularetom]

25. I get that, yet she seems overly anxious to prove that she isn't like "most women"

I'm not sure what her underlying psychological hangup with being a woman is but you can see the denial going all the way back to the "baking cookies" speech.

[libdem4life]

45. There is no psychological hangup about being a woman. They are called traditional gender

roles. Those women who do not subscribe to those and aspire to lead nations et al...must be even more capable than the current pool of men. It's just that simple. Women pay a heavier entrance price. I've been in corporate America for many years. It's the same, but getting better. I feel the Millenials will probably be the first generation to begin to feel equal from the starting gate.

I use the phrase...Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were talented dancers...but she had to do it backwards and in heels. Forgot who said it. That states it fully, IMO.

HRC just aspires to be President. And whether she succeeds or not, she has had to go through more glass ceilings than most of us know about. The next one will be easier, but she's without a doubt, the trail-blazer.

[libdem4life]

14. It's the Elephant in the Living Room...or the Very Large Hawk, if you will.

[farleftlib]

16. One of my biggest problems with HRC

Iraq and Libya. Both debacles but she has no regrets.

[sulphurdunn]

17. "We came, we saw, he died,"

[Live and Learn]

19. How anyone can support her after that comment and her IWR vote is beyond me. nt

[KoKo]

21. ..!

[Betty Karlson]

18. Clinton should be kept well away from any red buttons, that is for sure. eom

[nc4bo]

22. She and McCain can yuck it up to the tune of

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

Shaking their little fists on the war podium.

Fuck that!

We need Bernie Sanders!

[LW1977]

24. Threads like these

Are drawing me back to Hillary...


You guys are looking like Chelsea with these daily threads..

[Ferd Berfel]

26. Her record is fair game - As long as it's the truth

that's the difference between this and what the Clinton's did last week regarding Bernie's Health care plans

[nc4bo]

27. If what is said on a political forum is strong enough to sway you

than I feel awful that you may not have the tools available to select a candidate based on their positions, past or present.

The brightside........there's hope!

The candidates have websites where you can compare their various positions and select the one which most closely relates to you and your life experiences.

Google is great for that!

[ejbr]

41. !

[bvf]

43. OK, as long as you have a good reason.

Really, do you think anybody buys that?

[Motown_Johnny]

48. A story from a liberal source without comment is a problem?

I suppose you think that Bernie put out a negative ad too.

[Fawke Em]

28. I won't forget: it's the first thing I think of.

When someone tries to sell me on how much foreign policy she has, I turn around and say, "Sure, but all of it has been wrong."

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. Yet, she claims to be anti-gun.

[Duval]

30. K&R. Another thing that irks me, is MSNBC addressing her as "Madame Secretary".

She is NOT SOS, Kerry is. No, I'm not going on another tirade about the MSM. It's useless.

[Duval]

36. I just goggled the protocol re: former SOS.

On the protocol side, you would call someone by their last highest title, according to the United States order of precedence. For Hillary, this would be Secretary. However, if it is a title held by someone else where this could cause confusion (e.g., Secretary Kerry) then it would revert to the next highest title for which there is no confusion - Senator. This applies to governors as well, the protocol title for ex-governors is "the honorable." - except in some states with colonial roots. When I worked in Massachusetts the official address for the governor was "excellency." Suffice it to say, protocol is complicated and why the State Department has a whole office on this stuff - Office of the Chief of Protocol.

Should be Senator Clinton.

[EdwardBernays]

31. The entire US political class

Are warmongers.

Peace is not an option.

Very sadly.

Bernie is probably the least likely to do crap abroad but he'd still bound to do some. It's the American way.

He's "not a pacifist" and is "ready to take the country to war if necessary".

America doesn't have a peace option.

[cpwm17]

46. Bernie is certainly far less pacifist now than when he was of draft age.

[Motown_Johnny]

47. The lesser evil or the greater one

Which will you choose?

[EdwardBernays]

50. Well

I prefer to see this as a wash.

I am not making decisions based on foreign policy or guns as neither candidate matches my beliefs about these.

[INdemo]

34. But then there are things where she has shown great courage.

[cpwm17]

35. Hillary goes out of her way to remind everybody that she loves war,

Last edited Sat Jan 16, 2016, 05:17 PM - Edit history (1)

the worst criminal activity know to man.

It is fair to assume that her supporters are fans of the world's worst criminal activity since there is no excuse to not know about Hillary's love of the world's worst crime.

The terrible results from, and the total lack of shame for, her previous well-documented support for aggressive war shows where she stands. The world may never fully recover from those crimes, and she still wants more war.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

37. Didn't she vote for cluster bombs?

[polly7]

40. Yes. nt.

[yellowwoodII]

38. That's the big issue for me

I kept a list of all of our Congresspeople who voted for the war. Either they were expedient or they were misled. Either way it was wrong. If I knew it was a bad idea, why didn't she?

[last1standing]

42. She wants us to forget everything but our account and routing numbers.

n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

49. Mrs. Clinton wants us to forget more than that

It isn't just Mrs. Clinton's disastrous record as a war hawk, but her disastrous record as a neoliberal.

Neoliberalism is the colonialism department of neoconservatism.

-- Granny D (Doris Haddock 1910-2010)

The late, great American citizen, Granny D got the formula backward. Full spectrum dominance is the stated goal of the infamous PNAC latter, meaning control of the world's natural resources on behalf of US-based corporation and the military power to seize them from unwilling foreign states. As we know, the Bushies lied the people of the nation into war with Iraq with charges of Saddam's complicity with terrorists and the existence of his secret biochemical arsenal with a capability of striking the US, neither of which had any credible foundation known to the national intelligence community. Even if the Bushies didn't know their case for war was made up of falsehoods, they went to extraordinary lengths, including outing a CIA officer, to maintain the fiction that hey had good reason to believe it was true. The goal was never so much to oust Saddam, but to make sure ExxonMobil could get at their oil laying under the Iraqi people's sand.

Thus, neoconservatism is the enforcement department of neoliberalism.

We must not think that neoliberalism is nothing more than just the colonial occupation of defiant resource-rich nations. like Iraq under Saddam any more that we should mistake Saddam as a wise and benevolent leader. It is the entire regime of deregulation and free trade, rules rewritten for the world's largest corporation and the executives who hide behind the corporate logos, like the con artist hiding behind the curtain in Emerald City. Democracy is a system of government that is supposed to protect the people from shady businessmen and common criminals alike, but democracy is not perfect. When the people, who supposedly consent to be governed by those they choose are lulled to sleep and become lax in the vigilance required to maintain democracy from being undermined by clever men with evil spirits. then it is undermined. A bribe becomes a campaign contribution, and if you think you're not naive enough to think there's any difference, then just to prove it is true in all cases. Sophistry like that leads us to the nonsense of Citizens United v. FEC, where corporations have human rights and money is free speech.

Under the neoliberal regime, co-extensive with the administrations of Ronald Reagan and each of his successors, regardless of party, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act "modernized" the banking industry and made it legal to use the savings of small depositors in commercial banks in risky ventures that were once handled by investment banks, whose depositors were fully aware of the risks and had more to fall back on should the venture fail. Under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley, some small savers lost everything they had, including their homes and retirement funds. The obvious answer is to repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley and reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, preventing banks from using Mom-and-Pop's saving in risky ventures until Gramm-Leach-Bliley replaced it in 1999.

Only nine years into the regime of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, reckless behavior by Wall Street banks resulted in the global meltdown of 2008. Congress used taxpayers' money bail out the banks because they had become "too big to fail." Today, those banks are even bigger and still making risky investments using small savings. What happens if their continued reckless behavior caused another global meltdown? They expect another taxpayer bailout so they continue operating on the "modernized" business model. Nevermid that it is an unsustainable business model.

Mrs. Clinton, who gets an awful lot of free speech from Wall Street banks, not only to her political campaign, but in exorbitant speaking fees and donations to the Clinton Foundation, has expressed opposition to reinstating Glass-Steagall. Her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, supports reinstating Glass-Steagall. Wall Street doesn't give a lot of money to Senator Sanders; Senator Sanders depends on small contributions from the kind of people who maintain small savings accounts in banks that used to be safe until the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act replaced Glass-Steagall.

It isn't just her coziness with Wall Street banks along with her support for foreign policy misadventures like Iraq (when she was in the Senate) and Libya (when she was Secretary of State). She has supported free deals like NAFTA; she supported the TPP until she opposed it, and not because it contains the ISDS provision that threaten the deal crippling fines to any state that passes regulations that a panel of corporate shysters find inhibit expected future corporate profits. We must assume that since she has been silent on the ISDS issue that she's OK with it. I feel differently. Any deal with such a provision in it should be opposed regardless of what else is in it. As Secretary of State, she greased the skids for the fracking industry, an all-around bad idea. And in just the last week, she threw under the bus the concept of universal healthcare, which she championed as First Lady. Senator Sanders, on the other hand, is suspicious of use of military power just because we can, is opposed to free trade on principle, opposed to an environmentally destructive technique which would produce more unhealthy fossil fuels, and has been over the years an unwavering supporter of universal healthcare, unequivocally declaring that access to healthcare is a human right.

Senator Sanders is accused by some on this board of not being a real Democrat and making a career of bad-mouthing Democrats. If he has bad-mouthed Democrats it is because they opened themselves to criticism by supporting corporate interests in a clear betrayal of public trust, from supporting job-killing free trade deals to supporting an unsustainable and anti-consumer banking model to support for destructive environmental policies, like fracking or more oil drilling. As an independent, he's been a better Democrat than those who took those positions. He deserves our support.

Mrs. Clinton, on the hand, would like us to forget about all the past and present stands she's taken on the wrong side of issues important to Democrats.

[thesquanderer]

52. And now she wants new sanctions on Iran.

I don't think she wants us to forget this stuff. I think she thinks it's a feature, not a bug.

[Motown_Johnny]

53. I assumed she would have a reaction like that. I decided to post this first.

She always jumps in the same direction.