The Nation: Clinton Slams Obama on Foreign Policy, Echoing the Neocons and the Far Right

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180948/clinton-slams-obama-foreign-policy-echoing-neocons-and-far-right?utm_medium=email&newsletter=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20-%2020140812&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=email_nation

For months, Christie Watch has chronicled Hillary Clinton’s hawkish, even neoconservative-influenced views on foreign policy. During her tenure as secretary of state, from the inside, she argued consistently—usually in alliance with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—for polices that were almost universally more hawkish than President Obama seemed to favor, sometimes succeeding in getting her way and sometimes not. She backed the 2009 escalation of the war in Afghanistan, argued for vastly increased US military aid to the insurgents in Syria, and was the leading administration advocate for forcible regime change in Libya. More recently, as reported by Bob Dreyfuss’s Nation blog, she broke with the Obama administration’s Iran policy, joining Israel’s Likud government and neoconservatives in the United States in supporting a zero-enrichment policy aimed at shutting down production of non–weapons grade uranium enriched to just 5 percent.

But now, with her interview in The Atlantic with Jeffrey Goldberg, a staunch advocate for Israel and a neocon fellow traveler, she’s thrown down the gauntlet, openly ridiculing Obama’s cautious approach to world affairs. For those who’ve followed her career, at least since the 1990s, it seems to be a case of Clinton being Clinton, allowing her natural proclivity for hawkishness in foreign affairs to mingle with her political opportunism. Not wishing to let herself be outflanked on the right by hawks—who’ll rev up the Benghazi non-scandal against her in 2016 and who are conducting a nationwide propaganda campaign to blame Obama’s judicious caution for the world’s ills—Clinton has made a fateful decision to go on the offensive. In so doing, she’ll open the door for even harsher Republican criticism, starting a race to the bottom—or to the far right—on foreign policy. Just wait until 2016.

Clinton has already polarized the commentariat, with some liberals delivering critiques of her anti-Obama broadsides, while conservatives are both gleefully defending her, while adding that, of course, she doesn’t go far enough. The New York Times, in its competently written account of Clinton’s slow-moving but accelerating break with Obama, notes that with the interview in The Atlantic, “the veneer shattered.” Most egregiously, she used a single offhand comment by President Obama—“don’t do stupid stuff”—to portray that as the driving principle of Obama’s foreign policy. Said Clinton, in the Atlantic interview: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” (As Mike Allen of Politico points out, the actual quote from Obama was “don’t do stupid shit.” Allen also compiles a useful account of how the phrase emerged.) Even more idiotically, the New York Post headlines its account “Hillary slams Obama for ‘stupid’ foreign policies.”

In fact, the phrase “don’t do stupid shit” itself is a good one, since it distinguishes President Obama from his predecessor, who in fact did do a lot of stupid shit, again and again. But it’s hardly the be-all and end-all of Obama’s foreign policy. In his West Point speech in May, Obama laid out a carefully conceived view of how the United States should approach the world, in which he emphasized that military action ought to be used as a last resort, with politics and diplomacy first. It’s a view that Obama sometimes forgets, as in the current bombing campaign in Iraq, but it’s the right idea. Don’t expect Clinton to echo it.

[Divernan]

1. HRC:"natural proclivity for hawkishness in foreign affiars"+"political opportunism"

Excellent article/analysis of HRC's "slow moving but accelerating break with Obama."

Look, I'd like to see a woman in the White House, but not at the cost to our country and the rest of the world of installing an extreme war hawk. I offer these three comments which followed the Nation article, which present an interesting and civil debate on how to convince HRC's supporters that the US can't afford electing anyone, male or female who would be a hawk in the Oval Office.

George Hoffman
Hilllary's a very slick and savvy politician with her eyes on the prize, the White House, and she picked the perfect public venue to bolster her street creed as a war hawk at the perfect publication, The Atlantic. It is a bastion of fellow war hawks such as Jeffrey Goldberg, David Frum, who coined the infamous phrase "The Axis of Evil" for his boss, George W. Bush, and Peter Beinart, former executive editor at The New Republic, a "liberal hawk," who endorsed Bush's Iraq War resolution during his tenure there at the publication. But she's really a cynical and duplicitous war hawk. That's where the big-money campaign contributors are and the hardcore voters are among the war hawks on both parties she wants so desperately to attract in her second run for the presidency. Her operative word is expediency. I wonder if she really believes anything once you scrap off that patina of feminist rhetoric that has conned the Hillary groupies. .

Avatar

antym George Hoffman • 14 hours ago
I so agree with you, George. The "Hillary groupies" are just amazing: seemingly intelligent middle-aged Democratic women who lose all objectivity when it comes to Hillary. No matter how excruciatingly evident her lack of honesty, ethics, and morals, they adore her. No matter how obvious her allegiance to the 1% and militaristic views, they adore her. In public venues, they always seem just one breath away from (shouting) "Hill-ar-y!" It's as if she were the fifth Beatle.

Avatar
David L. Allison antym • 13 hours ago

Wait, antym: Attacking those who support Hillary is the stuff of the right wing trolls. Instead, I encourage you to inform them, to be positive with them and continue explaining to them and to the rest of us who fear the crazies of the right wing as much as we fear the neo-liberals like Hillary.

Many women see Hillary as the final break in the US "glass ceiling" where they can see but cannot reach the top, just because they are women. These are voters, who like me, want a woman President. They are not wrong or bad for wanting that and seeing Hillary as their chance to see a Democratic woman as President in their lifetime. And it is not just middle-aged but women of all ages in both parties who are supporting her just as it is not all old white men who are supporting the radical right wing.

Explain why these voters should prefer someone other than Hillary rather than bashing the voters who support her. We have to all pull together to find real and honest alternatives within the Democratic Wing of the Democratic party and to promote them for their policies and principles. Otherwise we run the risk of young activists and old pacifists having to make a choice among likely winners Hillary, or Rand Paul or likely losers like third party candidates.

Democratic wing voters have a deeper bench than ever among the governors and senators and a few outside of current politics. Let us look and decide who we want to support and then work hard to elect one of them.

[Enthusiast]

2. I used to defend Hillary.

But that was long before the inception of DU. Now, I'm not a fan, at all.

[tridim]

3. I can't think of a Democratic candidate that is worse than Hillary.

She makes me sick, and IMO she just lost any hope of becoming the nominee.

[CJCRANE]

4. Criticizing policies that she helped implement

is not a winning tactic IMO.

[Faux pas]

5. Maybe she can get

mccain to be her running mate...

[Romulox]

6. What's really insulting is blaming Hillary's Hawkishness on "the patriarchy". This is who she is,

and if there is indeed a "patriarchy", then Hillary is obviously, herself a "female patriarch" (sic).

[Puzzledtraveller]

8. i agree, on both parts

its part of her worldview.

[malaise]

7. Oh Dear

Soon it will be open season for The Nation - just ask Robert Parry.