Hillary Clinton tries to make much of her foreign policy experience, but really she’s an incompetent, warmongering hack who foists fracking on innocent people around the world for the greater good of multinational corporations—never mind the risk to aquifers—and who is a warmonger of the first order.
We already saw her vomit-worthy embrace of her “friend” and noted war criminal Henry Kissinger about whom The Nation wrote:
A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa.
In the article, which is titled, “Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace,” The Nation went on to write this about Hillary’s relationship to a man whose career is bathed in oceans of the blood of innocent people:
Last year, reviewing Kissinger’s World Order for The Washington Post, Clinton said that “Kissinger is a friend” and admitted that she “relied on his counsel” and that he “checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels.” The “famous realist,” she said, “sounds surprisingly idealistic.” Kissinger’s vision is her vision: “just and liberal.”
Then there is Robert Kagan, noted neocon who vigorously beat the war drums for the worst U.S. foreign policy disaster since the war of 1812. As The New York Times reports:
Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”
So no, Hillary fans, far from being some perfectly prepared candidate who is ready to do the whole job as president from day 1, Hillary Clinton is infamous for trusting the wrong people, whether it’s George Bush and Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger or the CIA.
As Dr Jeffrey Sachs, better known as a development economist and formerly the youngest tenured professor at Harvard, points out in a recent article “Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine”:
There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.
She is bungling and violent:
Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment.
This hawkish idiocy has led to further unfolding disasters in Mali and Nigeria, but Hillary’s crowning disaster is, of course, Syria:
Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must "get out of the way," backed by secret CIA operations.
It’s difficult to stop quoting the article, but I don’t want to run afoul of fair use and you all know the rest, anyway.
So next time anyone tries to claim how ready Hillary is or how her foreign policy experience is so much better than Bernie’s is, just have them read Sachs’ article. Or The Nation. Or The New York Times.
Hillary Clinton is not just more of the same when it comes to Wall Street, job-killing trade agreements, and the erosion of democracy from TPP. She’s worse. Much, much worse.
In fact, looking at the people Hillary Clinton trusts, you can bet that a Clinton presidency would be bathed in blood around the world.
Sunday, Feb 7, 2016 · 7:39:51 PM +00:00 · expatjourno
UPDATE:
Then there is Honduras. Taking a page right out of Kissinger’s Chile handbook, Clinto helped overthrow a democratically elected government in Latin America:
The released emails provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of how Clinton pursued a contradictory policy of appearing to back the restoration of democracy in Honduras while actually undermining efforts to get Zelaya back into power. The Intercept and other outlets have provided useful analyses of these emails, but there are a number of revealing passages, some in the most recent batch of emails, that haven’t yet received the attention they deserve.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/24/hillary-clinton-emails-and-honduras-coup
Sunday, Feb 7, 2016 · 7:51:03 PM +00:00 · expatjourno
UPDATE:
Then there is the refusal to call Boku Haram a terrorist organization, as dizzydean points out in an excellent diary-quality comment:
What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.
“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”
Please read the whole comment. There’s a lot more there—even a Kissinger connection. Thanks, dizzydean!