Why Sanders must call out Clinton's militant foreign policy

[portlander23]

Hillary Clinton’s glaring vulnerability: Why Bernie Sanders must call out her militant foreign policy
SEAN ILLING
Salon

Although Clinton has more experience working in international affairs than Sanders does, Sanders does have a record on foreign policy, and it’s far better than Clinton’s. In the last fifteen years or so, Sanders has consistently opposed military interventionism, with the exception Afghanistan after 9/11 – a justifiable conflict if there ever was one. As Vermont’s U.S. representative, he declined to rubber stamp Bush’s war in Iraq — one of the few members of Congress, on either side, to do so. As a senator, he also wisely denounced Obama’s plan to fund and train 5,000 “moderate” (whatever that means) rebels in Syria. And he’s been steadfastly critical of the hawks pining for war with Iran.

Clinton’s foreign policy record, on the other hand, is undeniably maximalist. On Syria and Libya and Iran, she has staked out interventionist positions, often well to the right of Obama. And, as everyone knows, she bowed to the Washington consensus in 2002, approving the disastrous Iraq War resolution. Clinton will say, as many Republicans have, that she voted for the Iraq War based on the intelligence that was available at the time. But that’s not a compelling justification.

On Wednesday, Clinton gave a sweeping foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution. Focusing mostly on the Iran deal, the speech was characteristically hawkish, and not quite what you’d expect from a Democratic candidate for president. After perfunctorily endorsing President Obama’s Iran deal (with a few caveats), she tried to distinguish her approach to the broader region from Obama’s.
In case Clinton’s pro-Israel position wasn’t clear enough for the largely pro-Israel audience, she insisted that one of the first things she would do as president is invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to the White House to “talk about all these issues and to set us on a course of close, frequent consultation.” This, one assumes, was a not-too-subtle reference to the deteriorating relationship between Obama and Netanyahu.

Clinton also doubled down on her view that we should have armed Syrian rebels (no concerns, apparently, for the unintended consequences), and she vowed to be more aggressive in dealing with Russia’s expansionism: “You remember President Reagan’s line about the Soviets: Trust but verify? My approach will be distrust and verify.” Clinton added, “We have not done enough [in Russia],” which is why she wants “us to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilization of Ukraine.”

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[JaneyVee]

1. I see this "journalist" didn't do their homework on Bernie.

From Bosnia, to Somalia, to Israel, to Afghanistan, to Libya, to Russia.