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Adding Up the Costs of Hillary Clinton’s Wars
There is so much in the article by Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, it's really worth the read.
Excerpts:
A Failure of Imagination
At a recent rally in Indianola, Iowa, Clinton said that “Senator [Bernie] Sanders doesn’t talk much about foreign policy, and when he does, it raises concerns because sometimes it can sound like he really hasn’t thought things through.”
The former secretary of state was certainly correct. Foreign policy for Sanders is pretty much an afterthought to his signature issues of economic inequality and a national health care system.
But the implication of her comment is that she has thought things through. If she has, it isn’t evident in her memoir, Hard Choices, or in her campaign speeches.
Hard Choices covers her years as secretary of state and seemingly unconsciously tracks a litany of American foreign policy disasters: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, and the “Asia pivot” that’s dangerously increased tensions with China.
At the heart of Hard Choices is the ideology of “American exceptionalism,” which for Clinton means the right of the U.S. to intervene in other countries at will. As historian Jackson Lears, in the London Review of Books, puts it, Clinton’s memoir “tries to construct a coherent rationale for an interventionist foreign policy and to justify it with reference to her own decisions as Secretary of State. The rationale is rickety: the evidence unconvincing.”
At a recent rally in Indianola, Iowa, Clinton said that “Senator [Bernie] Sanders doesn’t talk much about foreign policy, and when he does, it raises concerns because sometimes it can sound like he really hasn’t thought things through.”
The former secretary of state was certainly correct. Foreign policy for Sanders is pretty much an afterthought to his signature issues of economic inequality and a national health care system.
But the implication of her comment is that she has thought things through. If she has, it isn’t evident in her memoir, Hard Choices, or in her campaign speeches.
Hard Choices covers her years as secretary of state and seemingly unconsciously tracks a litany of American foreign policy disasters: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, and the “Asia pivot” that’s dangerously increased tensions with China.
At the heart of Hard Choices is the ideology of “American exceptionalism,” which for Clinton means the right of the U.S. to intervene in other countries at will. As historian Jackson Lears, in the London Review of Books, puts it, Clinton’s memoir “tries to construct a coherent rationale for an interventionist foreign policy and to justify it with reference to her own decisions as Secretary of State. The rationale is rickety: the evidence unconvincing.”
<snip>
Clinton often costumes military intervention in the philosophy of “responsibility to protect,” or “R2P.” But her application is selective.
She takes credit for overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, for example. But in her campaign speeches she’s not said a word about the horrendous bombing campaign being waged by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. She cites R2P for why the U.S. should overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but is silent about Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain to crush demands for democracy by its majority Shiite population.
Clinton, along with Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, and Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s national security advisor, has pushed for muscular interventions without thinking — or caring — about the consequences.
And those consequences have been dire.
She takes credit for overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, for example. But in her campaign speeches she’s not said a word about the horrendous bombing campaign being waged by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. She cites R2P for why the U.S. should overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but is silent about Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain to crush demands for democracy by its majority Shiite population.
Clinton, along with Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, and Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s national security advisor, has pushed for muscular interventions without thinking — or caring — about the consequences.
And those consequences have been dire.
<snip>
Would Hillary be more inclined toward an aggressive foreign policy?
Certainly more than Obama — Clinton pressed the White House to intervene more deeply in Syria, and was far more hardline on Iran. On virtually every foreign policy issue, in fact, Clinton is said to have led the charge inside the administration for a more belligerent U.S. response.
More than the Republicans? It’s hard to say, because most of them sound like they’ve gone off their meds. For instance, a number of GOP candidates pledge to cancel the nuclear agreement with Iran. While Clinton wanted to drive a harder bargain than the White House did, in the end she supported it.
However, she did say she’s proud to call Iranians “enemies,” and attacked Sanders for his entirely sensible remark that the U.S. might find common ground with Iran on defeating the Islamic State
Certainly more than Obama — Clinton pressed the White House to intervene more deeply in Syria, and was far more hardline on Iran. On virtually every foreign policy issue, in fact, Clinton is said to have led the charge inside the administration for a more belligerent U.S. response.
More than the Republicans? It’s hard to say, because most of them sound like they’ve gone off their meds. For instance, a number of GOP candidates pledge to cancel the nuclear agreement with Iran. While Clinton wanted to drive a harder bargain than the White House did, in the end she supported it.
However, she did say she’s proud to call Iranians “enemies,” and attacked Sanders for his entirely sensible remark that the U.S. might find common ground with Iran on defeating the Islamic State
<snip>
It’s more polite than the “make the sands glow” atavism of the Republicans. But in the end, it’s death and destruction in a different packaging.
http://fpif.org/adding-costs-hillary-clintons-wars/
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