Willful Ignorance on Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party Foreign Policy [View all]
For this opening post, I'll once again reference this thread starter and take on some of the claims made therein and then expand upon some of the other Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party memes on this message forum and around the 'netroots' in general.
First off, there was the misleading statement that Hillary is running to the right of John McCain, then as proof he linked to a post stating Hillary is running to the right of Barack Obama. I'm not sure what his goal was in that misleading line.
* Is he implying Obama and McCain are the same on foreign policy and the Hillary is running to the right of them both?
* Did he intentionally make his McCain statement in the hopes you wouldn't click his link?
* Does he think the line from his link that states "Hillary is essentially channeling John McCain" somehow equates to 'running to the right of John McCain?' At the most, that lines means she's running even with McCain, not the right or left.
* Maybe it was just an honest mistake and he only thought he was linking to a piece that somehow gives credibility to his "Hillary is running to the right of McCain" statement.
Either way, the statement is patently false and, unless he's had intimate conversations with them both that we haven't been privy too, I'll show exactly WHY he's wrong in a moment. Additionally, I'll show once again how the left has (intentionally?) misrepresented Hillary's words in that now-infamous Atlantic interview.
'Real' Democrats?
Much of this "progressive" brouhaha over Hillary Clinton stems from a misapplication of Neo-conservatism and a warped view of what an often stated 'real Democrat' is. There's also an oddly missing discussion of the Democratic Party's main foreign policy mantra of the last 100 years - liberal internationalism. The very fact that Democrats since Woodrow Wilson have been interventionallists - with the goal of spreading liberalism world-wide - should be enough to stop this "real Democrat" meme in it's tracks.
Before I go any further, I want to make a quick distinction. In any of these discussions, the point of what a 'real Democrat' is gets lost in a predictable sideshow. 'Progressives' want to discuss what they think Democratic party policy SHOULD be as opposed to what it IS and HAS BEEN. But that's really a totally different discussion. If someone doesn't think Democrats should be interventionalists, they shouldn't deny that Democrats are and have been for 100 years. Technically speaking - if we HAVE to draw a distinction between 'real' Democrats and others, and we don't - the interventionalists are the real ones. History proves it. Party platforms back it up.
Neo-Conservatism vs. Liberal Internationalism
Liberal Internationalism. Look it up. Liberal internationalism is a foreign policy doctrine that argues liberal states should intervene in other sovereign states in order to pursue liberal objectives. Such intervention can include both military invasion and humanitarian aid. It emerged during the nineteenth century, notably under the auspices of British Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and was developed in the second decade of the 20th century under U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (D).
FDR used Liberal Internationalism to rally the United States and its allies to fight the Nazis and fascism. Harry Truman wielded liberal internationalism to forge global free trade agreements and the reconstruction of Europe and Japan. Unfortunately, it was also the guiding principle behind our involvement in Korea and Viet Nam and drove the cold war. (Like I said above, a discussion can be had on whether the policy SHOULD be a Democratic one. It can't be denied that it IS a Democratic one.)
Liberal Internationalism was the cornerstone of President Kennedy's entire foreign policy, nowhere better indicated than in his inaugural speech: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Jimmy Carter insisted U.S. foreign relations should be "rebuilt upon the premise that the United States had a vital practical as well as moral interest in the promotion of a liberal world order." The principal foreign policymakers in the Carter Administration were in full agreement with the general tenets of Wilsonian internationalism. Brzezinski argues for a fusion of power and principle as "the only way to ensure global stability and peace while we accommodate to the inevitable and necessary reality of global change and progress." Human rights "was the wave of the present. It was the 'central form in which mankind is expressing its new political awakening,' and it was essential for the United States to be identified with this."
"As President," Carter reflects, "I hoped and believed that the expansion of human rights might be the wave of the future throughout the world, and I wanted the United States to be on the crest of this movement." Carter understood human rights to be more than "democratic principles such as those expressed in the Bill of Rights." LINK
Bill Clinton channeled Liberal Internationalism when he intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo (and should have in Rwanda). He expanded free trade, enlarged NATO, and pressed hard for peace in the Middle East.
Writer Juilan Ku writes a short but otherwise enlightening piece on President Obama and the difference between Liberal Internationalism and Neoconservatism. Neoconservativism tends to support unilateral or at least liberal coalitions acting alone whereas liberal internationalists are deeply committed to international institutions and their legal processes.
Short but accurate distinction. We can expand on this with the help of President Obama referring to Libya:
[bblock quote]“When you have civil conflict like this, military efforts and protective forces can play an important role, especially if they’re under an international mandate as opposed to simply a U.S. mandate. But you can’t solve the underlying problem at the end of a barrel of a gun,” he said. “There’s got to be a deliberate and constant diplomatic effort to get the various factions to recognize that they are better off arriving at a peaceful resolution of their conflicts.”
IRAQ! IRAQ! IRAQ!
In 2002 Hillary Clinton, like John Kerry, Joe Biden and other national representatives of the Democratic party, voted for the Iraq War resolution. An unfortunate and misguided action to be sure. She has since acknowledged the mistake and apologized for it. But in her speech on the Senate floor leading to that vote, she did what Kerry, Biden and others did - invoked the tenets of liberal internationalism. Coalitions. Humanitarian aspects. Like Viet Nam, this was a misuse of Liberal Internationalism to be sure but it still cannot be denied that liberal internationalism is and has been the underlying foreign policy doctrine of the Democratic party. Again, I'll stress debating that policy is a valid aim. Denying it is to deny history and established fact.
And I'll say emphatically that using the term 'neoconservative' when referring to her (or any Democrat I can think of) is an inaccurate use of the term. You may claim to not see a difference, but to call Clinton (and by extension Kerry, Biden, etc.) neocons is to also pin that label on Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, etc.
So that brings me to differences in Clinton's and McCain's foreign policy. I'll start with Iraq.
McCain voted for the Iraq War resolution in 2002. Clinton voted for the Iraq War resolution in 2002. But the similarities essentially end there.
Since, Hillary has admitted she got it wrong on 2002 Iraq War vote. In 2007 she opposed funding the war that didn't lead to withdrawal.
Voted YES on redeploying US troops out of Iraq by March 2008. (Mar 2007)
Voted YES on investigating contract awards in Iraq & Afghanistan. (Nov 2005)
Voted YES on requiring on-budget funding for Iraq, not emergency funding. (Apr 2005)
Condemns anti-Muslim bigotry in name of anti-terrorism.
No troop surge: no military escalation in Iraq. (Jan 2007)
Since the initial vote in 2002, Hillary's positions on Iraq have been an almost polar opposite of McCain's.
No one is asking you to forgive or forget Hillary's initial vote, but to maintain her policies are to the right of McCain's is a lie.
More?
McCain is in favor of maintaining Cuban embargo.
Clinton is in favor of ending the Cuban embargo.
McCain wants bigger army for more [link: http://www.ontheissues.org/Myth_of_Maverick.htm|militaristic] foreign policy.
Clinton believes in “Smart power” an alternative to military action, a strategic deployment of a mix of economic, diplomatic, political, legal, and cultural power, tailored to specific situations.
Viewing their difference is easy and there are a lot of them. Here and here.
But what of the continued hysterics on HRC's Atlantic Interview?
For now, the only important thing is to recognize how these media quasi-events take shape. Guided by Goldberg, headline writers focused on a throwaway line characterized by the inimitable Maureen Dowd as "a cheap shot at President Obama ... calling him a wimp just as he was preparing to order airstrikes against ISIS."
Clinton said this: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
Actually, President Obama's version of the slogan was earthier. However, turning Hillary's paraphrase into an insult required ignoring almost everything she said about his administration's foreign policy.
Why had Obama used the phrase?
"I think he was trying to communicate to the American people that he's not going to do something crazy," Clinton said. "I've sat in too many rooms with the president. He's thoughtful; he's incredibly smart, and able to analyze a lot of different factors that are all moving at the same time. I think he is cautious because he knows what he inherited, both the two wars and the economic front, and he has expended a lot of capital and energy trying to pull us out of the hole we're in. So I think that that's a political message."
Does that sound like a slam to you?
Elsewhere, Clinton added that, "It was stupid to do what we did in Iraq and to have no plan about what to do after we did it. That was really stupid."
She'd voted for the Iraq war, you may recall. Dowd certainly remembered. The erratic New York Times columnist bitterly blamed Hillary for the death of her friend Michael Kelly, the first "embedded" journalist to die there. Dowd neglected to mention Kelly's own September 2002 column calling Al Gore "wretched," "vile," "contemptible" and worse for opposing the invasion.
I guess she forgot.
But did Hillary really argue that if Obama had armed Syrian "moderates" as she'd recommended as secretary of state, that the United States wouldn't have to be bombing ISIS fanatics in Iraq today — blowing our own tanks and APCs to smithereens that they captured from fleeing Iraqi soldiers?
That was another headline take from The Atlantic interview. Once again, no, she did not. Indeed, she reminded Goldberg that the chapter on Syria in her recent book was entitled "A Wicked Problem."
"I can't sit here today," Clinton said "and say that if we had done what I recommended, and what [then-U.S. Ambassador] Robert Ford recommended, that we'd be in a demonstrably different place. ... I don't think we can claim to know."
http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/clinton-obama-beef-fake/Content?oid=3424322
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