from Truthdig:
Hillary Pushes the Button Posted on Aug 14, 2007
By Robert Scheer
What in the world was Sen. Hillary Clinton thinking when she attacked Sen. Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in going after Osama bin Laden? And why aren’t her supporters more concerned about yet another egregious example of Clinton’s consistent backing for the mindless militarism that is dragging this nation to ruin? So what that she is pro-choice and a woman if the price of proving her capacity to be commander in chief is that we end up with an American version of Margaret Thatcher?
In response to the 9/11 hijackers, armed with weapons no more sophisticated than $3 box cutters, American military spending, with Senate Armed Services Committee member Clinton’s enthusiastic support, has catapulted beyond Cold War levels. Sen. Clinton has treated the military budget as primarily a pork-barrel target of opportunity for jobs and profit in New York state, supports increased money for missile defense and every other racket the military-industrial complex comes up with, and still feels no obligation to repudiate her vote for the disastrous Iraq war.
Given her sorry record of cheerleading the irrational post-Cold War military buildup, do we not have a right, indeed an obligation, to question Clinton’s whether Clinton is committed to creating a more peaceful world? Don’t say that we weren’t warned if a President Hillary Clinton further imperils our world, as she has clearly positioned herself as the leading hawk in the Democratic field. What other reason was there for first blasting Obama for daring to state that he would meet with foreign leaders whom Bush has branded as sworn enemies, and then for the attack on Obama’s very sensible statement that it would be “a profound mistake” to use nuclear weapons in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the attempt to eliminate bin Laden?
Isn’t that a no-brainer—or can Clinton conceive of an occasion where even the threat, let alone the actuality, of a nuclear attack in the immediate neighborhood of nuclear-armed Pakistan and India would send the right message? And what about the dangerous message of Clinton’s assault on Obama; “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.” Huh? Just exactly how does one make a compelling case to other nations against the proliferation of nuclear weapons when members of the nuke club, particularly the president of the one nation that has killed hundreds of thousands of people with two of these ungodly weapons, will not, at the very least, promise to abstain from first use of a weapon that could quite easily eliminate most life on this planet? ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070814_hillary_pushes_the_button/