Revealing Clinton and the establishment.

[passiveporcupine]

A very interesting article about Obama and foreign policy, that reveals a bit about Hillary too.

The message Obama telegraphed in speeches and interviews was clear: He would not end up like the second President Bush—a president who became tragically overextended in the Middle East, whose decisions filled the wards of Walter Reed with grievously wounded soldiers, who was helpless to stop the obliteration of his reputation, even when he recalibrated his policies in his second term. Obama would say privately that the first task of an American president in the post-Bush international arena was “Don’t do stupid shit.”

Obama’s reticence frustrated Power and others on his national-security team who had a preference for action. Hillary Clinton, when she was Obama’s secretary of state, argued for an early and assertive response to Assad’s violence. In 2014, after she left office, Clinton told me that “the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad … left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.” When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and?‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-shit angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid shit” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who is pro–stupid shit?’?” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit.

Obama on the establishment.

"...There’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It’s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses. Where America is directly threatened, the playbook works. But the playbook can also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions. In the midst of an international challenge like Syria, you get judged harshly if you don’t follow the playbook, even if there are good reasons why it does not apply.”

Very interesting:

A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders.

Right after Obama’s reversal, Hillary Clinton said privately, “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/

I really don't think Obama and Hillary are friends. I think Sanders would have no problem thinking for himself and not being driven by the establishment playbook on foreign policy. I know Clinton would play by the book. I don't want someone in the office again who does so blindly.

[BillZBubb]

1. Hillary has always been a hawk on foreign policy.

She has no problem using military action without worrying too much about the consequences. She's reckless. She fits right in with the neocons and the military industrial factions.

[passiveporcupine]

2. Yes, and everyone knows it.

Biden, who is acerbic about Clinton’s foreign-policy judgment, has said privately, “Hillary just wants to be Golda Meir.”

Gold Meir, nicknamed The Iron Lady, until it was passed to Thatcher.

[loyalsister]

3. In more ways than that

She seems to glorify war. She fantasized being under fire in Bosnia and boasted in nauseating action movie fashion "we came we saw he died."
And then there was the gem about being proud to have the Iranians as an enemy.
She's like the chickenhawks who envision themselves to be war heroes because they visit a war zone.