Would Hillary Clinton oppose or support US imperialism’s delusions of world conquest
Last edited Sun Mar 22, 2015, 11:56 AM - Edit history (1)
It would be helpful if one or more of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination for president (assuming there will be more than one) would raise some of these issues during the campaign. One wonders if we might be a better country if we redirected some of our massive military spending to education, infrastructure, and jobs.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/21/pers-m21.html
Bellum Americanum: US imperialism’s delusions of world conquest
21 March 2015
The US Congress and White House are currently in discussions over the federal budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins in October. Amidst the various tactical disputes over ruling class policy, on one issue there is near-universal agreement in Washington: there must be a significant and immediate increase in funding for the already gargantuan Pentagon war machine.
The lead in this campaign has been taken by the White House, with Obama’s new defense secretary, Ashton Carter, declaring Wednesday that the president would veto any budget that did not remove the so-called “sequester” caps on military spending introduced in 2011. While Congress has found various ways to get around these caps over the past several years, the Pentagon is insisting that they be formally eliminated.
In his testimony, Carter outlined the basic considerations motivating this demand. “In order to ensure our military remains the world’s finest fighting force, we need to banish the clouds of fiscal uncertainty that have obscured our plans and forced inefficient choices. We need a long-term restoration of normal budgeting and a deal… that lives up to our responsibility of defending this country and the global order.”
Here, the pretense that the US is engaged in a campaign to defend human rights or ensure democracy is all but dispensed with. The United States “must protect the homeland, build security globally, and project power and win decisively,” the defense secretary declared. In other words, the US military must be in a position to conquer the world, and it must have unlimited funds at its disposal in order to do so.
The United States more and more resembles a garrison state, in which enormous funds are diverted to finance instruments of repression and war. The scale of the US military today dwarfs anything that could have been imagined by President Dwight Eisenhower when he warned more than a half century ago of the power of the “military-industrial complex.”
Obama’s budget calls for $561 billion in “base” military spending. This figure, which is $38 billion above the sequester cap, does not include $51 billion in supplementary war funds included in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget. In their own budget proposal, House Republicans have formally adhered to the spending caps, while funneling tens of billions of additional funds into the OCO in order to make up the difference.
more...
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That's how she rolls. 
Washington Post September 4, 2014
By Hillary Rodham Clinton
When Americans look around the world today, we see one crisis after another. Russian aggression in Ukraine, extremism and chaos in Iraq and Syria, a deadly epidemic in West Africa, escalating territorial tensions in the East and South China seas, a global economy that still isn’t producing enough growth or shared prosperity — the liberal international order that the United States has worked for generations to build and defend seems to be under pressure from every quarter. It’s no wonder so many Americans express uncertainty and even fear about our role and our future in the world.
In his new book, “World Order,” Henry Kissinger explains the historic scope of this challenge. His analysis, despite some differences over specific policies, largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administration’s effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century.
During the Cold War, America’s bipartisan commitment to protecting and expanding a community of nations devoted to freedom, market economies and cooperation eventually proved successful for us and the world. Kissinger’s summary of that vision sounds pertinent today: “an inexorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing territorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting participatory and democratic systems of governance.”
This system, advanced by U.S. military and diplomatic power and our alliances with like-minded nations, helped us defeat fascism and communism and brought enormous benefits to Americans and billions of others. Nonetheless, many people around the world today — especially millions of young people — don’t know these success stories, so it becomes our responsibility to show as well as tell what American leadership looks like...snip
...Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels...snip
MORE from Rodham Clinton: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hillary-clinton-reviews-henry-kissingers-world-order/2014/09/04/b280c654-31ea-11e4-8f02-03c644b2d7d0_story.html
Here's Hanks full book in audio form- all 12 boring hours You can get a lot from the first 15 minutes.
Anyone that liistens to/ reads that will know more about American Foreign Policy than 95% of the "reporters" in the US.
Since Hank is so close to the top
A reminder of Hank's past
Intervention in Chile
Main article: United States intervention in Chile § 1970 election
Chilean Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality in 1970, causing serious concern in Washington, D.C. due to his openly socialist and pro-Cuban politics. The Nixon administration, with Kissinger's input, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to encourage a military coup that would prevent Allende's inauguration, but the plan was not successful..
...The most expeditious way to prevent Allende from assuming office was somehow to convince the Chilean congress to confirm Jorge Alessandri as the winner of the election. Once elected by the congress, Alessandri—a party to the plot through intermediaries—was prepared to resign his presidency within a matter of days so that new elections could be held. This first, nonmilitary, approach to stopping Allende was called the Track I approach.[49] The CIA's second approach, the Track II approach, was designed to encourage a military overthrow.[51]
On September 11, 1973, Allende died during a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who became President.[53] A document released by the CIA in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the United States, acting through the CIA, actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military...more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
