Several members of the Republican foreign policy elite recently announced they’ll refuse to vote for Donald Trump if he’s the Republican nominee – with some going so far as to say they’d rather vote for Hillary Clinton.
And while you may be shocked to see ideology so easily trump party affiliation, you shouldn’t be. Take a look, for instance, at this New York Times article from 2014.
Back then, much of the GOP establishment was filled with trepidation about a frontrunner in the 2016 Republican presidential campaign. Mark Salter, John McCain’s former chief of staff, said that if this particular candidate won the nomination, “Republican voters seriously concerned with national security would have no responsible recourse” other than to vote for Clinton.
They weren’t worried about Donald Trump, though.
The Republican candidate they were planning to spurn in favor of Clinton was Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
The Republican mandarins’ preemptive rejection of Paul clarifies the real reason they’re excommunicating Trump today.
Unlike Trump, Paul wasn’t promising to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” or to get Mexico to pay for a 30-foot-high wall on its border with the United States.
Instead, Paul’s sin was questioning if our many ongoing wars are such a super idea, and whether we needed to add some more to the list.
As Paul said last year, “There’s a group of folks in our party who would have troops in six countries right now — maybe more. … This is something, if you watch closely, that will separate me from many other Republicans.”
This is Trump’s real transgression, too: not his frequent mindless belligerence, but his failure to be belligerent enough, particularly about the Iraq war, Libya, Israel-Palestine, and Russia.
That’s why the GOP foreign policy elite see Hillary Clinton as preferable to either Trump or Paul. Her belligerence has never been in doubt. For her entire public life, she’s been an enthusiastic exponent of a deeply bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, one that says the U.S. can and should run the world. This has been evident in her personal lobbying as first lady for the Kosovo war in 1999; her push as secretary of state for escalation in Afghanistan; her support for regime change in Libya; and her call now as a presidential candidate for the deployment of more U.S. special operations troops in Syria. But it’s perhaps clearest in her and Bill Clinton’s decadeslong embrace of regime change in Iraq.
Consider the not too distant history. Back in the 1980s, the U.S. enjoyed a close relationship with Saddam Hussein, even though it was by far the most vicious period of his rule. The Reagan administration provided Iraq with financial, military, and diplomatic support in its brutal war with Iran, stymieing any international attempts to hold Hussein to account for his use of mustard and nerve gas on Iranians and his own citizens. And the admiration was definitely mutual: When Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq as Reagan’s envoy in 1983, Iraq’s foreign minster went “out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person.” Hussein himself, while in U.S. custody years later, called Reagan “a great man” and “honorable leader” whom he wished he could have met in person.
But by the time Bill Clinton was elected in November 1992, Hussein had been transformed into our greatest enemy because he had defied (or misunderstood) the U.S. and invaded Kuwait. Clinton’s predecessor, George H.W. Bush, led the war that pushed Iraq out, and while he overruled generals who wanted to push on to Baghdad, he subsequently announced that U.S. policy was that Saddam absolutely must be forced from power.
Just before his inauguration, Clinton sounded a more equivocal note: “The people of Iraq would be better off if they had a different ruler,” he told Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. “But my job is not to pick their rulers for them. I always tell everybody I am a Baptist. I believe in deathbed conversions. If he wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behavior.”
These would be the least warlike remarks on Iraq by either Clinton for the next 23 years (and counting).
And the day after his New York Times interview, Clinton – stung by Republican criticism — forcefully walked it back, telling a press conference that there was “no difference between my policy and the policy of the present administration” on Iraq. By June 1993, Clinton was himself bombing Baghdad in retaliation for a purported Iraqi plot to assassinate Bush Sr.
So now Clinton’s policy was the same as Bush Sr.’s: Saddam must go. And there was far more to the U.S. strategy than just intermittent bombing. The U.N. had imposed harsh sanctions on Iraq, and the Bush administration had explained frankly that it would use them as the world’s cruelest bank shot: The sanctions would kill Iraqis, which would motivate surviving Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, so that the killing could end.
“Iraqis will pay the price,” said Robert Gates, then Bush Sr.’s national security adviser. “All possible sanctions will be maintained until [Hussein] is gone.”
Iraqis did pay the price. Under Bush and then Clinton, hundreds of thousands died due to cholera, typhoid, malnutrition, and other causes. One top U.N. official responsible for administering the sanctions quit, calling it “genocide” because “this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq.”
In June 1997, former Reagan official Robert Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century with the support of many future members of the George W. Bush administration, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Partly by encouraging forces already in motion, and partly by nurturing new forces, PNAC nudged the U.S. political system toward a formal confrontation with Iraq.
In early 1998, PNAC released an open letter calling on Clinton to adopt a new policy of “removing Saddam Hussein from power.” By that October, Congress had approved the Iraq Liberation Act with a huge 360-38 bipartisan majority in the House (including then-Rep. Bernie Sanders) and by unanimous consent in the Senate. Like the open letter, the act declared, “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”
Bill Clinton’s statement on signing the bill — all about the need “to eliminate Iraq’s prohibited weapons” and for “an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home” — could have come out of George W. Bush’s mouth five years later. So, too, could Clinton’s words in December 1998 about “Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs” as he launched Operation Desert Fox, his largest bombing campaign yet against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Clinton’s ongoing attacks on Iraq eventually became the longest air operation by the U.S. since Vietnam, with a gruesome tally of civilian victims.
By the time Clinton handed the White House keys over to Bush in January 2001, he’d set the table for his successor to take the next logical step: a full-scale invasion.
Is it fair to say Hillary Clinton agreed with her husband and the Republican Party on Iraq during the 1990s? Here’s what we know:
When asked in 2002 about the Iraq Liberation Act, Hillary declared, “I agreed with it in 1998. I agree with it [now].” In her 2003 book, Living History, she quotes her own remarks to the press “as bombs fell on Iraq” during Desert Fox: “I think the vast majority of Americans share my approval and pride in the job that the president’s been doing for our country.”
Those close to her have long made the case that she is more militaristic than Bill Clinton. The late diplomat Richard Holbrooke once said, “She is probably more assertive and willing to use force than her husband.”
In October 2002, Clinton joined 28 other Democratic senators in voting for war with Iraq. In her speech explaining her decision, she reiterated her support for the Iraq Liberation Act four years before.
It was “undisputed,” according to Clinton, that Iraq possessed “chemical and biological weapons,” and had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. Moreover, she said, even if Iraq disarmed, the U.S. should continue a policy of regime change short of direct invasion.
Clinton would later acknowledge in her book Hard Choices that she “got it wrong,” but had “acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had.” In fact, she had not even bothered to read the classified version of the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. She had also refused to meet before her vote with Scott Ritter, a top U.N. weapons inspector in the 1990s – and, as a New York state resident, her constituent — to talk about the meager evidence that Iraq had banned weapons.
Almost three years into the war, Clinton was still telling unhappy New York voters that she did not “believe that we can or should pull out of Iraq immediately.” She did publicly oppose the Iraq “surge,” but Robert Gates, then-secretary of defense, claims he witnessed her say that this was all politics to please Democratic voters as she ran for president. (Gates, a longtime GOP functionary, also says he and Clinton developed “a very strong partnership” because they “agreed on almost every important issue.”)
Today, as a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton is back on familiar terrain, calling for “more allied planes, more strikes, and a broader target set” to bomb Iraq (and Syria). While she does “not believe that we should again have a hundred thousand American troops in combat,” she says we do need to maintain a U.S. ground presence in Iraq and allow them “greater freedom of movement and flexibility, including embedding in local units and helping target airstrikes.”
When it comes to domestic policies, there are genuine differences between Republican and Democratic elites. The Republicans’ most dearly held dream is to smash the New Deal and return the U.S. to circa 1900, complete with catastrophic financial panics and mass public poisonings. By contrast, Democratic elites understand that letting the 99 percent eat most days actually enhances corporate profitability.
But on foreign policy, the two parties are now like-minded enough that when the candidate for one strays from party orthodoxy, the candidate for the other may be a more than adequate substitute. As Max Boot, a prominent neoconservative writer, adviser to Marco Rubio, and (if necessary) Clinton voter, says: “What she basically espouses is a pretty mainstream view.” Even Dick Cheney has praised her competence and mused that “it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.”
The people at the top of both political parties largely agree on what U.S. foreign policy should be. They normally just fight over who should get to order the bombings. But this year, it looks like they won’t even disagree on that.
Related:
Top photo: Former Secretaries of State (left to right) Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Hillary Clinton participate in the ceremonial groundbreaking of the future U.S. Diplomacy Center at the State Department on Sept. 3, 2014, in Washington, DC.
And the so called “liberal” media has allowed her war record to basically be ignored.
Hardball’s Chris Matthews went further than he ever has questioning her on that war record during his latest interview with her. Much more than any other talking head. The rest of the time CM is a promoter of Hillary
Alarming that so many Dem’s are willing to ignore her war hawk record. Deadly
This is rich.
Democrats complain about GOP/Tea Party intransigence, but when a Democrat reaches across the aisle to build a bipartisan coalition, it’s called “collaboration.”
That “collaboration” seems to leave a considerable number of corpses in its wake…
I call it treason.
It is easy to work with the “other” party when there is actually only ONE party. You can tell that because BOTH parties are trying to stop the only candidate unfettered by corporate bullies.
Cogent and accurate points about the duopoly party policies of establishment warmongering. But credibility is undercut by trying to claim Democrats aren’t as equally beholden to Wall Street’s donorist interests, against those of the public – they are. The corporate and bankster love lavished on the Democratic frontrunner with enormous speaking fees for secret speeches ought to educate those who believe otherwise. Neoliberalism is economic hegemony, neoconservatism its military enforcer, with the oligarchy at the helm.
[Excerpt]
But on foreign policy, the two parties are now like-minded enough that when the candidate for one strays from party orthodoxy, the candidate for the other may be a more than adequate substitute. As Max Boot, a prominent neoconservative writer, adviser to Marco Rubio, and (if necessary) Clinton voter, says: “What she basically espouses is a pretty mainstream view.” Even Dick Cheney has praised her competence and mused that “it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.”
Challenge: mainstream view ???
Refer, Perpectual war – Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war
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Defense Department Prepares Quadrennial Defense Review
By Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class William Selby
Special to American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 12, 2009 – Defense Department officials are preparing a far-ranging report on current and future goals as part of a congressional mandate.
“It’s really the mother of all reports to Congress,” Selim Belmaachi, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, said of the Quadrennial Defense Review in a “DoDLive” bloggers roundtable yesterday.
Secretaries of defense have seized the reporting requirement “as an opportunity to articulate their vision for the department and to use it as a decision-making opportunity,” Selim said.
Every four years since 1996, the QDR has outlined the department’s institutional vision for all elements of its operations.
Dory said law requires the Defense Department to look 20 years into the future when evaluating the security environment to consider what capabilities it might need to address the challenges it would face.
“A second substantive element of the QDR is a national defense strategy that will explore what our strategic ends are, the ways we will endeavor to achieve those ends, and then the means we have available to pursue those,” Selim said.
Another key element of the report is how the department measures its required activity in response to “presidential tasking,” Selim told the bloggers. “That’s a key force-planning and force-sizing determination.”
The QDR has a major impact on troops on the ground, Selim said, because Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has placed special emphasis on making the department more responsive to meeting their current needs.
“It may seem that a congressional report would be a bit esoteric and not relevant to the troops on the ground,” she said. “But what makes it relevant to the troops on the ground really is the secretary’s injunction to the department that what we need to do is focus on succeeding in the conflicts that we’re in.”
The report also has implications in terms of the way the department uses its resources, Selim said. “It has implications in terms of how we relate to our interagency partners, how our allies and friends see us in the world, and how our potential adversaries see us,” she said.
The report is due to Congress in February.
(Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class William Selby works in the Defense Media Activity’s emerging media directorate.)
Contact Author
Related Sites:
“DoDLive” Bloggers Roundtable
Sanders isn’t so innocent as he tells everyone.
Sandeers quid pro quo
Sanders received SuperPAC funding from American Crystal Sugar in 2012 in two $5000 donations.
Sanders went so far supporting sugar subsidies he tabled a vote on legislation to repeal sugar subsidies, preventing its’ passage.
To further his support, he voted against allowing EPA to conduct surveillance flights over Big Ag sites to more efficiently detect potential water contamination of nearby waterways.
After shutting down EPA surveillance, he wrote a letter to EPA demanding better air quality measures, which he uses as evidence to prove his environmental activism.
Nice try Henry. SuperPACs can’t fund a candidate directly. This was a plain old $10,000 contribution from two employees of American Crystal Sugar–not even in the Top 20 recipients from that company that year. For reference, Hillary was the number one recipient in the country in 2008 and the number two recipient so far in 2016 (second only to Marco Rubio). Oh, and Sanders voted Nay on S. 2372 to prohibit EPA aerial survellance. (I did learn that our future Dear Leader Chuck Schumer voted with Republicans on this pro-polluter initiative.) Thanks for wasting my time.
“No Difference Between Our Policies” — Yes.
Scott Ritter was interviewed by Sy Hersh at the New York Society for Ethics and Culture; during this interview he stated that had Al Gore been crowned, he too would have invaded Iraq. Immediately upon stating this the crowd responds with boos and hisses and disapproval.
Yea, so here it is: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton; they’re all the same. What would be very interesting to witness is a Bernie Sanders becoming president; how will his principles change?
I’ve seen a bumper sticker: Republican / Democrat :: same shit, different piles.
I believe the reason in part is because even after elections the U.S. is not scrubbing the folks in lower level bureaucracy positions. Really, or maybe ideally, all the programs should be restarted, fire everyone from the previous administration right down to the cleaning crews.
I think it’s going too far to say for certain Gore would have invaded, but Lieberman would have, and in general politicians in office are not the same as the people they are once they leave political ambition behind.
By his own account, Obama nearly let himself get pressured into starting a war with Syria,mthough he clearly thought it was stupid and only pulled back at the last minute.
He is the one that set the red line.
Let himself?
I suppose he also “let himself” be led into wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan Ukraine. etc. … He was going to “do regime change” in Syria, but the generals revolted, and luckily for him, Putin happened to offer him a face-saving way out.
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/sy-hersh-blockbuster-top-us-general-ignored-obama-led-secret-plot-protect-assad-and
War is what he wanted. He is, and always will be a warmonger. It is what he believes in. Just like Hillary, Bill, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Albright,Kerry, McGoon, Kissinger…the whole pantheon of American imperial psychopaths.
Ritter is absolutely correct.
Clinton/Gore, with the immeasurably septic hands of that murderous vacuum Albright, pulling the strings, happily murdered between 1 million and 1.5 million Iraqis. And that was just kindling…
Lets elect Bernie! March 15th is the election. After March 15th Bernie has a chance to win every state, the map becomes that favorable to him! So tomorrow is it, Vote!!! If there is anyone you can talk to, any money you can give, any door you can knock on, now is the time! Right now might be the last time we ever get the chance to change America for the better. This revolution counts on the extraordinary efforts of people like you, if you help we win.
where to vote: http://www.vote411.org/
where to donate:https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/contribute/
where to phone bank: https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/phonebank
Ohio: Semi-open primary, If you will be 18 in November your eligible to vote!, Ohioans do not declare a party when registering to vote, but registration is required.
Illinois: Open Primary! Illinois has Same-Day Registration which allows you to register to vote at the primaries on Tue, March 15, Illinoisans are also able to request a Democratic ballot to vote for Bernie on election day
Florida: Closed Primary, Floridians must register as democrat to vote for Bernie!
North Carolina- simi-closed primary, North Carolinians must register as democrat or undeclared to vote for Bernie!
Missouri: open primary! Good news! Because Missouri has open primaries, you can vote for Bernie regardless of your registered party.
Most of these states (except Illinois!) you needed to have registered by late February to vote, because freedom?
Also check out, sign and share this petition if you don’t plan on supporting Hillary in the general election, if she is the nominee:
https://www.change.org/p/i-support-bernie-sanders-but-i-will-not-support-hillary-clinton-in-a-general-election
Thank you! Erik Pye
Making this distinction all the clearer is Clinton’s recent attack on Sanders’ (verbal) support for the Sandinistas – in combination with her record, it seems to betray more than simple political opportunism. If we take that to be the case, the two possibilities are that a) Clinton has an idealistic and extremely flawed understanding of the historical workings of American foreign policy, and teeters on neo-conservatism out of ignorance of its moral or even simply consequentialistic failures, or b) essentially supports the project of American imperialism without regard for those who find themselves wed to it.
I’m not sure which possibility I find more troubling.
I have a theory about the 1991 invasion of Iraq. The entire operation was conceived by the US as a means to destroy the Soviet Union. How you might ask could one destroy the USSR by invading Iraq, especially after Iraq was seemingly the illegal aggressor by its invasion of Kuwait.
This story begins in 1980s where Iraq was heavily supported by the west in their invasion of Iran. From billions in loans, to operational and strategic technical support, to facilitating the purchase of arms by Sarkis Soghanalian under tact support of the CIA. And it didn’t stop there. The US US also pressured Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to back Iraq, who did to the tune of $90b over the life of the war. The west also load tens of billions to Iraq.
However despite the picture painted in [1] The reality is that as early as 1985 the US began to actively undermine Iraq.
Now as we all know the US was playing both side. Using Israel as a conduit they were secretly selling weapons and arms to Iran, whilst Israel was providing training and support to Iran.
In the Iran Contra affair a curious recording was uncovered by the congressional investigation. Although unrelated to the matter at hand the recording had Col Oliver North speaking with Iranian businessmen in 1985, where curiously he illustrated a position that utterly contradicted US foreign policy at the time. He said this;
“One of the things that we would like to do, okay, is we would like to become actively engaged in ending this war in such a way that it becomes very evident to everybody […] that the real problem in preventing peace in the region is Saddam Hussein. And we will have to take care of that” [2]
At the end of Iraq-Iran war in 1989 Iraq was bankrupt. It owed over $80b.
However for reasons that have never been fully understood Saudi Arabia and Kuwait began to produce more oil then was allowed under OPEC agreements. Supposedly they were pissed at Iraq for giving up the war effort against their mortal Iranian enemies the real reason becomes more apparent.
With the over production of oil, Kuwait’s slant drilling operations into the Ramadi fields (imagine that you had a country stealing your oil and then dumping it onto the market causing the price to crash). By 1989/90 the price of oil had fallen below $30 a barrel.
Simultaneously to this Saudi Arabia and Kuwait began demand repeat of Iraq’s war debts. By all reports they were extremely rude to Saddam and his diplomats. Which was confusing because at the time Saudi Arabia’s and Kuwaits combined forces were a 1/10th of what the Iraq’s had mobilised at the time. And therein lies the biggest problem for Saddam. What goes unreported at the time is that Iraq had universal health and education. Its health system was extremely advance and sophisticated. Not to mention the pension for retired soldiers Saddam had a huge problem. He had a million men under arms, the biggest army in the world at the time but with every dollar fall in the cost of oil he was losing $10b per month to his income.
He couldn’t afford to demobilize his army. Nor could he afford to let Kuwait steal his oil and dump it on the market.
Thus the trap was set. Saddam approached the US ambassador and asked to invade Kuwait. At the time the Ambassador said that the US had no position on the matter which Saddam took as the US washing their hands of what was to come next.
Iraq invaded and within days of the invasion on 6 August 1990 Bush declared those infamous words “This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait”.
After using the infamous babies thrown out of incubators – which turned out to be utter war propaganda, and ironically the complete opposite of what had really happened in Kuwait at the time Bush and Cheney became rabid proponents of invading Iraq. At the time Iraq send hundreds of doctors to Kuwait because at the time Kuwaiti doctors and staff had abandoned their own people/patients and ran out of the hospitals. Iraq had to send incubators to Kuwait for godsake (and fact a decade latter there was funny mix up where Iraq, and Kuwait were fixing up the medical equipment discovered that Kuwait had not returned dozens of incubators that the Iraq’s had brought themselves).
Anyway Bush and Cheney created a coalition of the willing, resulting in a massive ground invasion force and a huge bombing campaign that saw the destruction of an entire Iraq army corp that had dug in defensive lines, well within Iraq’s borders.
The west destroyed with about 100-200 dead (mostly blue on blue causalties) 3 Iraq Army corps – about 75,000 per corps.
They annihilated and destroyed most of Iraq’s infrastructure killing tens of thousand of civilians. They dumped hundreds of tons of radioactive uraniam shell on Iraq and hundreds of thousands of tons of burned rubbish and chemical waste.
Now back to the USSR. How is any of this related to the fall of the USSR.
The US, though its links with the Saudi’s and Kuwait pressured these two countries into overproducing oil. This saw the price of oil fall to $20 a barrel. At the time the biggest export for USSR was oil. To cover up the fact this was economic war, and to avoid the USSR from firing its nuclear weapons at such at blatant aggressive attack on Russia’s national security the Americans used Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait as a red herring/cover for their real target. With massive falls in revenue the USSR collapsed in December 1990.
In fact the US contributed to the fall of Russia by offering it short term loans that would become payable in the early 90s. Essentially though in December 1990, when the USSR collapsed you can see that that they were the real target.
The tone and narrative by the US is so clear. Cheney himself, going from rabid war rousers, said in January 1991 that there was no need to sacrifice the lives of american boys to topple Saddam. That’s part of the reason why the US never pursued Saddam. The operation was a success, the real target, the USSR was gone and quickly descending into civil war.
Of course yes Saddam’s armies had been destroyed but at that point the US reversed its course, allowed Saddam to destroy the uprisings in South and North Iraq and effectively demobilsed the coalition of the willing. It was important to leave Saddam in power as ultimately Iraq oil was important lever.
——————
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war
2. Report of Congressional Committee investigating the Iran/Contra affair – Washington DC government printing office 1987. Vol. 1 appendix A: Source documents ‘Frankfurt meeting’, tape 12, page 1500. Copy of the tape can be obtained by a professional Congressional researcher.
Interesting……
Murderers all, filthy scum. As sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Mad Woman Al bright stated in public that it was acceptable for tens of thousands of Iraqi children to die. No more evil person ever existed.
What the world needs is to eliminate Nuclear Weapons before they eliminate the world but we seem to have forgotten all about them.
Yes indeed. “we think it was worth it…”
In related breaking news, Hillary has said she will not accept the presidency unless she retains the right, as executive, to bomb wedding parties. In a great show of empathy and intra-party bonding, some of her fervent supporters, fearing that she might back out otherwise, have offered their own upcoming nuptials for the purpose, to tide her over, until she gets an official red button of her own.
This article is excellent, though as others have said, it leaves things out. I’d add in her disastrous support for regime change in Libya (and the fact that we knew about the opposition being linked to al-Quaida). I’d add in her supercharging (bonus points if you get the reference) tensions with Russia. (I’d encourage you to read the two articles below, written by the staff of Radio Free Europe, the State Department’s propaganda arm (run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which at the time was headed by Clinton) criticizing PUTIN after the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings, not the Islamist Chechen terrorists, with one commentator even audaciously comparing it to the flight of Mathias Rust! Of course, since it’s a violation of Federal Law to read RFE’s stuff in the USA unless they clear its release, you’re a criminal if you do check it out…)
http://www.rferl.org/content/In_Wake_Of_Metro_Bombings_Putins_War_On_Terror_Is_Under_Fire/1998111.html
http://www.rferl.org/content/A_Mathias_Rust_Moment_For_The_Siloviki/1997145.html
I’d also point out that Clinton should have known of Iraq’s LACK OF WMD as far back as 1995. In 1995, Hussein Kamil, the head of the WMD program (and Saddam’s son-in-law) defected. He was extensively debriefed by UNSCOM, and no doubt several intelligence agencies. His testimony on the extent of Iraq’s WMD programs was unexpected, and widely repeated, from Bill Clinton to Dick Cheney. However, he told both UNSCOM and CNN that Iraq’s WMD were DESTROYED, and that he ordered their destruction.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/iraq_defector/kamel_transcript/
http://www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf
It should be noted that Bill Clinton not only ignored this information (and lied about it in 1998 to launch Desert Fox), but even used Kamil’s testimony to argue with Arab leaders for INCREASING sanctions on Iraq. (See “The Clinton Tapes”.)
And, lest we forget, the Republican Party has been more than willing to back Hillary Clinton before. (See the massive vote to confirm her, with only three hard-right Republicans dissenting, or Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” attempting to get Republicans to vote Hillary Clinton to ensure Obama lost the nomination.) Republicans have also been noted to abandon one of their own to ensure the election of someone agreeing with their foreign policy. (Ask Republican Alan Schlesinger, who was ditched by his own party so Joe Lieberman could stay in Congress.)
Dark Secrets of the Order
https://youtu.be/s6cx1fTsu9M
The Independent UK has another interesting article which also points towards a Hillary Clinton future of back to the past, i.e. no-questions-asked support for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf Arab dictatorships, and expanded militaristic regime change efforts across the region.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barack-obama-saudi-arabia-us-foreign-policy-syria-jihadism-isis-a6927646.html
The article is a kind of follow-up to the Jeffrey Goldberg article in the Atlantic, which gives an image of Obama as being willing to buck the foreign policy establishment that Clinton is so slavishly loyal to:
“Mr Goldberg, who has had extraordinary access to Mr Obama and his staff over an extended period, reports: “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. I’ve heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as ‘Arab-occupied territory’.” Television and newspapers happily quote supposed experts from such think tanks as if they were non-partisan academics of unblemished objectivity.”
Those think tanks – Brookings Institute, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Cato Institute, Heritage Institute , etc. – all boilerplate neolib-neocon foreign policy PR agencies that take millions from countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc. and work to influence U.S. foreign policy AND domestic policy, not for the benefit of American citizens, but for the benefit of Middle East dictatorships, oil corporations and arms dealers.
American corporate media of all kinds routinely tap these think tanks for “expert opinions” without mentioning their financial arrangements – and these are also the think tanks that played a central role in promoting all the lies about WMDs in Iraq in 2002-2003. For example, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq” by Brooking’s Ken Pollack, full of lies about WMDs, was a big star in Washington in 2002-2003, given a prominent review by the NYTimes, etc. etc. That clown is still an “expert” on the Brookings payroll, still writing BS books, still churning out the same tired PR line for his paymasters.
Clinton went along with that agenda in 2003, she has close relationships with such ‘foreign policy experts’, she supported the overthrow of Assad, the destabilization of the country, the covert shipment of weapons to Syria that ended up in the hands of ISIS and Al Qaeda – all of which helped create a huge flood of refugees into Europe, leading to backlashes, like the rise of far-right ultranationalists in Germany – and yet she never gets asked the hard questions about the failures of this kind of stupid foreign policy, or why she continues to support it.
A Hillary Clinton presidency would be more like a Bush presidency on foreign policy issues – a complete disaster, a replay of the past. The Democrats have made a huge mistake by running her for president.
The Goldberg article is no source for the recent history of the USA in the ME. One glaring example is the assertion gas the the Assad regime used Sarin
gas early in the conflict. This has been widely disputed by multiple sources.
For example:
from Reuters:
U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator
U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.
The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.
“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.
“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian.
Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.
The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels accuse each another of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks, one near Aleppo and another near Damascus, both in March, and another in Homs in December.
The civil war began with anti-government protests in March 2011. The conflict has now claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and forced 1.2 million Syrian refugees to flee.
The United States has said it has “varying degrees of confidence” that sarin has been used by Syria’s government on its people.
President Barack Obama last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a “red line”.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
For example from Reuters:
U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator
U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.
The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.
“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.
“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian.
Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.
The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels accuse each another of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks, one near Aleppo and another near Damascus, both in March, and another in Homs in December.
The civil war began with anti-government protests in March 2011. The conflict has now claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and forced 1.2 million Syrian refugees to flee.
The United States has said it has “varying degrees of confidence” that sarin has been used by Syria’s government on its people.
President Barack Obama last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a “red line”.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
Are the neo-conservatives going to rejoin the Democratic Party?
http://www.voltairenet.org/article190595.html
I think it is fair to call these two ladies: Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton the Madam Butchers.
No. Why restrict oneself to only a part of the story? They happily kill messieurs et enfants, by the hundreds of thousands, as well.
Will someone please get try to get to the bottom of the new Cointelpro. Make the FBI deny it. Then when it eventually comes out, let’s prosecute the lying bastards. This time around, we need to hold them accountable. Hold hearings and send people to prison.
WHO do you think is going to “hold hearings” ?
Someone from the corporate owned congress?
The only way to even begin to hold anyone accountable is
to tell the democrats and republicans to go away.
Okay, fine. Scrap the idea of hearings.
But some people need to go to prison this time around.
Bernie collaborates with Republicans, he let’s them pay his bills.
It seems like you think this is biting and clever, but it doesn’t seem to mean anything. Unless your talking about the way sanders wants to take the taxes that everyone pays and allocate them in a way that is actually an investment in the people, society and economy. There are some extremely ignorant people who have been misinformed as to believe this is getting “free stuff”. When the people who are getting free stuff are the corporations who pay nothing in taxes and still get subsidies.
Clinton is as Republican as she can be — much more so than Trump. Being a Republican, in itself, is not a crime, but in the case of her foreign policy, it veers toward the Republican extremism (which was the yesteryear’s mainstream), i.e. the pursuit of the US hegemony of the world by resorting to any means (CIA operation, inciting coups, military deployment, pouring calculated aids, etc., etc.).
What is truly concerning is, on top of all this, Clinton portrays herself as some brand of international feminist — recall her campaign’s clamor about her 1995 Beijing speech on the International Women’s Day. She is not a feminist of any kind let alone international kind. Her intervention as the Secretary of State in Honduras crushed rights of all minorities including women and indigenous people (and the murder of Berta Caceres). Her Middle-Eastern and North African policies grossly hurt the weak, notably women and children, religious minorities (especially women among them), and the poor.
Why the sections of America are excited about Clinton is a wonder to me and what is more, those who claim to be progressive supporting her is utterly wrong-headed.
I first worked for McGovern, I support Hillary now, I’ve said enough.
What do you think George McGovern would think about Hillary’s views on foreign policy? George McGovern has real humanity and cared about people.
His stance against the Viet Nam war was courageous. I am sure I cannot say the same about Hillary. Her solution is always a military one. This is bad for the world.
Hillary is so driven to have power that she will lie and make up things to get votes. What she said to Gates is what she is doing all the time to get people to vote for her.
“Robert Gates, then-secretary of defense, claims he witnessed her say that this was all politics to please Democratic voters as she ran for president”
Hillary cannot be trusted. Hillary Clinton does not represent the needs of the American people. The answer today is only Bernie Sanders/
Hillary is the antithesis of “courageous”. She is the ultimate coward, happiest arranging deaths of others. Those who will be sent to kill and those who they are sent to kill. As long as killing occurs, it’s ok by her.
More half-truths from Jon Schwarz.
Yes indeed, Hillary is a republican who lies about what she
supports, but so are the majority of democrats,
Especially the “elite democrats.”
This phony focus on foreign policy as if it is separate from
domestic policies (for democrats and republicans alike)
ignores the devious way the democrats have enabled the
same agenda as the republicans.
Consider the fact that the great majority of the faking
“progressive caucus” of democrats have endorsed Hillary Clinton
when one of their supposed own, Sanders, has been endorsed by
only a handful of them.
If there were real progressives among democrats,
they would NOT support the democrat party.
Schwarz apparently NEEDS to believe in the democrats
and seeks ways to pretend that they are an opposition party,
which they are not.
“so are the majority of democrats” — yes, big money controls our political system.
I hope you did not miss The Republicans’ most dearly-held dream is to smash the New Deal and return the U.S. to circa 1900, complete with catastrophic financial panics and mass public poisonings. By contrast, Democratic elites understand that letting the 99 percent eat most days actually enhances corporate profitability.!!!
I do not know what you are trying to say.
I did not “miss” those sentences. Those sentences are
part of the pretense which is based upon ignoring
the fact that the democrats have helped lead the attack on
the safeguards from the New Deal and the same insistence
upon privatized corporate control of ALL aspects of life
is continually pushed by democrats and republicans.
This notion that these two parties need to be seen
as separate is now just a form of willful ignorance
and worse.
the democrats have helped lead the attack on the safeguards from the New Deal and the same insistence upon privatized corporate control of ALL aspects of life is continually pushed by democrats and republicans
That is EXACTLY the point Jon is making!!
I very much disagree.
Schwarz has dissected a portion of the corpse into parts –
Hillary, foreign policy, republican elite, democrat elite,
in an effort to distract people from seeing that the poison
which is throughout the whole system, was fed to the corpse
by democrats and republicans TOGETHER.
Hillary is typical of both parties.
Of course, we can disagree on our interpretation of what Jon is trying to convey…… without being disagreeable!!
I recommend you read, if possible, the following…. Iron law of Institutions….that may better explain the author’s position……
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html
That was, a bit… rich. No doubt they hoist babies on their congressional letter openers, too, if they still opened or read letters. But they don’t, due to fear of … mass public poisoning. Our Democratic Antoinette no doubt thinks letting them eat cake most days, while the elite keep it too, does enhance corporate profiteering, or at least enable stock buybacks.
Our survival is under some threat if Hillary accedes to the throne. That issue trumps whether or not a candidate makes rash statements to inflame nationalist supporters. Of course, Sanders is far preferable and Stein, or an independent like Jesse Ventura if the GOP nominates a neocon are useful protest votes. I’m not too optimistic about the future these days.
I’m quite optimistic about the past. It’s starting to look better and better.
I can see why, Duce. No doubt Hillary will soon publicly recognize how instrumental fascists were to ending the persecution of Jews everywhere during WWII, and you’ll finally enjoy afterlife as a proper oligarchy originalist.
Great write up Jon. Thank you.
She will be even worse if she ever gets elected….just like the majority Republicans who welcomed Bibi to address the congress!! imagine her promise to meet Netanyahu in the first two weeks of her getting elected…what a nightmare scenario! And, after the current aid agreement expires, he is demanding $5B instead of the current $3B per year!!! She may voluntarily offer even more! With all the millions of dollars she has made with her husband, it is too much to hope, she will give it from their foundation and spare us the tax payers.
ps I love your statement By contrast, Democratic elites understand that letting the 99 percent eat most days actually enhances corporate profitability.
“ps I love your statement By contrast, Democratic elites understand that letting the 99 percent eat most days actually enhances corporate profitability.”
yes
Great write up Jon. Thank you.
She will be even worse if she ever gets elected….just like the majority Republicans who welcomed Bibi to address the congress!! imagine her promise to meet Netanyahu in the first two weeks of her getting elected…what a nightmare scenario! And, after the current aid agreement expires, he is demanding $5B instead of the current $3B per year!!! She may voluntarily offer even more! With all the millions of dollars she has made with her husband, it is too much to hope, she will give it from their foundation and spare us the tax payers.
ps I love your statement, “By contrast, Democratic elites understand that letting the 99 percent eat most days actually enhances corporate profitability.”
Mr. Schwarz
“…….For her entire public life she’s been an enthusiastic exponent of a deeply bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, one that says the U.S. can and should run the world…..”
God I love you Jon. It isn’t even Columbus Day! You reiterated what most people should have known about the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and – at the same time – you somehow forgot to mention that the US liberated Kuwait and Iraq. Oh, there are a few other Schwarzisms like:
“…….PNAC nudged the U.S. political system toward a formal confrontation with Iraq…….”
That’s laughable and the margin was by what? 360-38! Wow, that was a powerful nudge by the Neoconservatives. In addition, the Iraqi Liberation Act specifically prohibited the use of the US military to remove Saddam from power which you left out (Wikipedia):
“…….The Act specifically refused to grant the President authority to use U.S. Military force to achieve its stated goals and purposes…..”
Which is probably the reason that Bernie Sanders voted for the legislation. In addition, the UN had passed 16 resolutions because Saddam refused to cooperate with the inspectors. This is partially what laid the groundwork for the invasion in 2003. Saddam clearly could not to be trusted.
“……By the time Clinton handed the White House keys over to Bush in January 2001, he’d set the table for his successor to take the next logical step: a full scale invasion……”
That was a logical step – only the US needed 911 to invade. So you skipped an important step. Without the murder of 3000 innocent people, the US did not have any basis to invade Iraq. But Saddam had a long history of developing and using weapons of mass destruction, invasioning sovereign countries, supporting terrorism against Israel and launching missiles capable of carrying chemical weapons against Israel – unprovoked. He ruled his police state with an iron fist, and had two sons waiting in the wings to continue their brutal rule. He was untrustworthy using the oil for food program to enrich himself (kind of like Iran).
Finally, the Kurds and the Shiites were liberated – at great cost. The US successfully disarmed Iraq and left them incapable of developing WMDs for a long time into the future. The Iraqis voted for the first time, and the door has been left open for democratic rule if the Shia government becomes more tolerant.
You know, repeating lies about Saddam’s non-existent WMDs, or lies about promoting ‘democracy in Iraq’, over and over doesn’t make them any more true.
You’re just applying the Goebbels propaganda strategy: take a complex topic, reduce it to a point that a small child can understand it, then repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
In reality, the monumentally idiotic neocon agenda was to establish a puppet dictatorship in Iraq, implement a neocolonial economic system controlled by Wall Street and Washington, establish large military bases and then use those bases to go on to invasions of Iran, Syria, and then on to Central Asia countries, a truly ridiculous “global dominance” wet dream fantasy of some ivory tower-bound neocon ‘hawks’ who’d never seen a war up close in their lives.
Any surprise it was such an epic disaster, costing trillions and spawning sectarian violence and terrorist groups all over the place?
You continue to make a truly convincing case not about US foreign policy objectives, but that you are off your rocker.
“Even Dick Cheney has praised her competence and mused that “it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.”
Dick Cheney endorses Hillary Clinton for president! Take that, Bernie!
With the likes of Cheney and Kissinger behind her, perhaps she can lure David Duke away from Trump, for a trifecta, and a glorious future.
Well, Bernie is offering $15/hr. (but he will probably be crucified in the hallowed halls of Congrease for doing it.). Hillary … maybe a crust of bread and such, jon.
Thank you Mr. Schwartz for an excellent analysis of the fraud represented by Hillary Clinton.
The only thing wrong with this article is that it’s an understatement. Nothing about her embrace of Netanyahu, for instance. She is to Obama’s right on that. I haven’t bothered to check on her record is statements on Israeli violence, but know it’s a nasty one and also fairly typical of that bipartisan consensus you mentioned.
Nobody in the campaign is mentioning the American support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen. Clinton is not to blame– it started after she had left her job as Secretary of State, but it does illustrate the bipartisan consensus on killing innocent people for no good reason, even as Biden lectures the Palestinians for not condemning terrorism.
There is also her role in Honduras and her embrace of Kissinger. Libya. The desire to support ” moderate” rebels in Syria, thereby prolonging the war. Etc…
Excellent article. Thank you so much!
A specific manifestation of Clinton’s continuation and expansion of GOP Military Industrial Complex can be seen in Mexico. Unfortunately, her legacy in Mexico has not been getting any traction in most media outlets, but it deserves scrutiny.
https://nacla.org/news/2016/03/03/hillary-clinton's-dark-drug-war-legacy-mexico
As Secretary of State, Clinton continued and expanded Bush-era policy. She funneled hundreds of millions of dollars, automatic weapons and military-grade equipment to the Mexican state, even as she received constant cables and other evidence detailing state violence against civilians and human rights abuses. Cutting military aid to states like this should not be one of those “Hard Choices.” From the article:
“Notably, several of the contractors that profited from U.S. security assistance in Mexico — such as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies Corporation, which owns Sikorsky — reportedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation. And according to the transparency group Open Secrets, Clinton currently tops the list of all 2016 presidential candidates in campaign contributions from the military contracting industry.”
Please spread the word on Clinton’s legacy in Mexico. Post links to this article, send it via e-mail to friends and comrades. Get the word out there.
Hillary Clinton would act like an international gangster, but in the usual way: making rational choices based on the interests she represents, trying to manage negative PR, and so forth. Trump probably couldn’t care less about the neocon agenda, but he seems erratic. He’d be a xenophobic bully with access to nuclear weapons.
Terrible choices all around.
The US enjoys the broadest consensus over some of its worst policies.That these should be the product of democratic consideration and debate only makes it more culpable.
Your comment “the product of democratic consideration and debate” is simplistic. This country citizens are in large part immobilized from said democratic consideration and debate by the constant barrage of half truths and lies thrown at them by the media. Very little informed consideration goes on under these circumstances. The citizens are blinded by the smoke and fog of corporate media propaganda.
All the more dismaying that for all its limitations and malformations, its version of “democracy” remains one of the principal exports the US feels justified to force feed any part of the planet within drone-range of its Potus. It is clear that the longer a nation pleasures itself on the shaft of its own sovereignty the sooner it goes blind.
I agree, but in a democracy it’s everyone’s responsibility to become informed. While the ignorance of U.S. citizens is largely the product of very expensive and sophisticated propaganda, that doesn’t excuse the people; it just means that they need to make more effort.
No one disputes that war has been very, very good for the country with the world’s strongest military. Hillary Clinton is merely restating the obvious. There is also no doubt that these fundamental interests trump any contrived divides between the two parties on cultural issues.
The problem is not that Mr. Trump is not warlike enough, but that he may choose the wrong enemies. There is a good reason for attacking countries in the Middle East. They produce oil, which is sold in US dollars. They need to spend those dollars and the most obvious choice is to buy weapons. So the wars produce a sustainable economic cycle – countries sell oil to finance their wars and sustain the US economy by buying its weapons.
However, Mr. Trump does not own oil companies or military contractors and so doesn’t see the benefit derived from this virtuous cycle. He expresses puzzlement that none of these countries present any existential threat to the United States and opines that the wars are a waste of resources. Looking at the world, he rightly sees that China is the main rival to the US for global dominance, and wonders why they are being left in peace.
However, what he fails to realize is that China is not going to use its American dollars to purchase US weapons; it will manufacture its own. And unlike the sparsely populated sheikdoms in the Middle East, they could present an existential threat to the United States. So attacking China would be a very bad idea, even if it did produce a short term improvement in the balance of trade. A country must choose its friends wisely, and its enemies even more wisely. Mr. Trump lacks the requisite wisdom.
Astute!
Why do intelligent people believe he or she can predict the future?
You all (the reporter and a ton of commentators) are assuming: 1) Trump will win; and 2) what will happen when he wins.
There is no difference between us doing this and the Fox News types yammering on about commie Bernie.
No matter who wins, the country will not collapse.
Mr. Schwarz, please do not use the MSM language of “mainstream” to refer to Clinton and cohort’s view of policies.
Mainstream perhaps among the neo-elites – but, not mainstream among Americans!
Mrs. Clinton and cohorts are neo-elites that advocate ucerping of other people’s and other nation’s wealth under a propagandist “soft touch”!
Speaking of having a soft touch, Jayz, I imagine it’s sort of a goal at The Intercept to see their articles find wider dissemination in the world and occasionally get picked up by other news services. Referring to what’s been those mainstream politicians over the last few decades – as something like “empire’s establishment” instead, while far more accurate and factual, would probably hinder that goal considerably. I’ve found the writers at TI have tremendous talent for conveying opinion between their lines, and I also bet the editors often believe it their job to keep it there.
— “Clinton and cohorts view of policies. ……Mainstream perhaps among the neo-elites – but, not mainstream among Americans!”
What would be mainstream America’s views on the Palestinian situation?
What would be mainstream America’s views on the extra-territorial activities of Israel?
What would be mainstream America’s views on the military coup in Egypt that deposed and imprisoned the elected government in favour of a military dictatorship?
What would be mainstream America’s views on the Wars in the Americas?
What would be mainstream America’s views on the murder of the President of Chile in 1973 and the installation of a military dictatorship?
What would be mainstream America’s views on Chavez in Venezuela?
–To describe but a few.
I submit that there is little difference between the public views of Clinton and cohorts and mainstream America. However, one group knows that they are players in perpetrating a massive ongoing fraud and the other is largely unaware of the actual facts and reality of these above situations, ….and is quite content to remain so.
I’ve come to believe some hybrids can be a good thing for OUR planet.
The neoliberal & neoconservative hybrid-Hillary? Not so much.