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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWho Said It: Hillary Clinton or John McCain? | Mother Jones
In a recent interview with the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton went to great lengths to separate herself from her former boss, President Obama, in the realm of foreign policy. She unabashedly defended Israel's actions in the ongoing war in Gaza, chalked up civilian casualties in that conflict to "the fog of war," drew a hard line on Iran, and argued that the "failure" of the Obama administration to arm Syrian rebel forces led to the rise of the Islamic State. Asked about the president's unofficial motto for foreign interventions"Don't do stupid stuff"Clinton did not mince words: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
Hillary's talking like a hawk again. Critics on the left and right have said she sounds more like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the grand old hawk of the GOP. How right they are. Can you guess who gave the following quotesClinton or McCain?
On Voting to Authorize the Iraq War
"If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Take the quiz here - http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/hillary-clinton-john-mccain-quotes-foreign-policy-quiz
She is just NOT a liberal. Period.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)McCain owns 2,3,5,and 8.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)I don't have it up any more. 6 or 7, though, it's too many.
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)Now that's the kind of liberal president I want!
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)She admitted that particular thing was a mistake, but McCain has admitted it too and she still believes in neocon political objectives.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)Everyone should take this quiz. It will dispel the myth that Hillary Clinton is anywhere to the left of a neoliberal hawk. Yowza.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Just can't wait to tell the kids that a vote for H> is a vote for more of the same that isn't Hope and Change!
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)manufactured wars.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)No more Third Way corporate thieves, liars, and warmongers in Democrat costumes.
Time to end the monied corruption of our democracy.
democrank
(11,096 posts)FORCEFULLY state what a horrendous, horrific disaster that Iraq War vote was. No more of this...I think I might have made a little mistake by voting for it.... but an admission of how horrible the consequences of that vote were. Look at the ongoing nightmare today. Look at the dead, the wounded, the maimed the traumatized, the displaced. Look at the pitiful destruction of historic buildings and artifacts. Look at the money it cost. Look at the toll it has taken. Look at what happened to some of our civil liberties.
As far as I`m concerned, we`ve been way too easy on the war hawk enablers. I don`t give a damn how many flag pins they all wear. The Iraq War vote produced DEVASTATING results.
I`ve talked about this before and now I`m going to say it again in case you missed it the first or second time. These war votes have consequences. Not for everyone, but for many. In our house we`re dealing with several cancers, including brain cancer, from Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. A friend, just a few miles away, is also suffering from Agent Orange exposure. He has open sores all over his body. How many decades ago was the Vietnam War? And how many (on both sides) are still suffering?
Hillary can hawk talk all she wants to, but I guarantee she`d be thinking twice about a war vote if she ever saw Charlotte covered with open sores from a chemical her government used.
We need to have a war on war. It`s time to talk peace.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)They were already planning for peace before WWII was over.
Republicans are acting like the war wont be over until ALL of them are DEAD and they define "them" as "Arabs".
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)proved themselves to be less intelligent than the average DUer who knew that Bush/Cheney were lying without having the access to the intel they had.
No, I don't think it was a mistake, it was an agreement with the PNAC view of America as a World Empire. And chaos in the ME was exactly what they wanted.
And you are correct, we have most definitely not been nearly hard enough on the war hawks who have cost this and other countries so very much.
First many of them should have been prosecuted, which would have happened IF this country was not controlled by the very criminals who are responsible.
Then anyone who enabled them in any way, should have been shunned as far as running for any elected office due to the fact they lack the judgement skills necessary to be a leader.
This is the real Hillary 'we came, we saw, he died'.
Libya another country on the Neocon list to destroy, and now it can be crossed off, tragically destroyed and its people living in terror.
for exposure
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)[center]''We came, we saw, he died.''[/center]
- Hmmm? Howzzat? Or, we can just put our hands over our eyes and bendover and pretend it doesn't hurt like hell when they shove it in again. When more of our neighbors and son/sisters are killed or maimed for Exxon's profit margins. When more baby corpses clinging to their dead mothers from our dronestrikes, flashes through the Internets in videos like just more of yesterday's news. Who cares? And finally we hope that the pain of all this and of our meaningless existence doesn't force us to realize that it's us who has done this we are the ones responsible for all the shit that we're in.
Because we keep voting for these idiot warmongers.
K&R
What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. Its not good at much else. Author Tom Clancy
Cerridwen
(13,258 posts)Unfortunately, DUs copyright standards don't allow me to quote any more than I have below. There is far more at the Q & A of the interview. Reading it in its entirety is highly recommended.
To read the Atlantic interview on which the article in the OP is based: the Atlantic interview
-----------------------------
From the article in the OP:
On Iran's Nuclear Program
"Contrary to <Iran's> claim, there is no such thing as a right to enrich. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no such right."
-------------------------
From the Atlantic interview:
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Its a consistent line. Ive always been in the camp that held that they did not have a right to enrichment. Contrary to their claim, there is no such thing as a right to enrich. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no such right. I am well aware that I am not at the negotiating table anymore, but I think its important to send a signal to everybody who is there that there cannot be a deal unless there is a clear set of restrictions on Iran. The preference would be no enrichment. The potential fallback position would be such little enrichment that they could not break out. So, little or no enrichment has always been my position.
(a couple more paragraphs back and forth at the link)
===============================
From the article in the OP:
On Arming the Syrian Rebels
The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad
left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled."
-------------------------------------
From the interview:
JG: Do you think wed be where we are with ISIS right now if the U.S. had done more three years ago to build up a moderate Syrian opposition?
HRC: Well, I dont know the answer to that. I know that the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assadthere were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middlethe failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.
(It's a little tougher here as there are several paragraphs throughout the interview regarding this issue)
====================
From the article in the OP:
On the War in Gaza
"I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets. Israel has a right to defend itself."
----------------------------
From the Atlantic interview:
JG: So, Gaza. As you write in your book, you negotiated the last long-term ceasefire in 2012. Are you surprised at all that it didnt hold?
HRC: Im surprised that it held as long as it did. But given the changes in the region, the fall of {former Egyptian President Mohamed} Morsi, his replacement by {Abdel Fattah} al-Sisi, the corner that Hamas felt itself in, Im not surprised that Hamas provoked another attack.
JG: The Israeli response, was it disproportionate?
HRC: Israel was attacked by rockets from Gaza. Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command-and-control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult. Of course Israel, just like the United States, or any other democratic country, should do everything they can possibly do to limit civilian casualties.
(again, several paragraphs back and forth with more specific information available)
=============================
From the article in the OP:
Asked about the president's unofficial motto for foreign interventions"Don't do stupid stuff"Clinton did not mince words: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
--------------------------------------
From the Atlantic interview:
HRC: Great nations need organizing principles, and Dont do stupid stuff is not an organizing principle. It may be a necessary brake on the actions you might take in order to promote a vision.
JG: So why do you think the president went out of his way to suggest recently that that this is his foreign policy in a nutshell?
HRC: I think he was trying to communicate to the American people that hes not going to do something crazy. Ive sat in too many rooms with the president. Hes thoughtful, hes 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 were in.
So I think that thats a political message. Its not his worldview, if that makes sense to you.
(again, more at link)
==========================
From the article in the OP:
"...chalked up civilian casualties in that conflict to "the fog of war,"
----------------------------------
From the Atlantic interview:
JG: Who do you hold responsible for those deaths? How do you parcel out blame?
HRC: Im not sure its possible to parcel out blame because its impossible to know what happens in the fog of war. Some reports say, maybe it wasnt the exact UN school that was bombed, but it was the annex to the school next door where they were firing the rockets. And I do think oftentimes that the anguish you are privy to because of the coverage, and the women and the children and all the rest of that, makes it very difficult to sort through to get to the truth.
(again, much more in the back and forth paragraphs)
==================================
PBass
(1,537 posts)We're trying to create a frenzy of FUD* here.
*fear, uncertainty, doubt.
Cerridwen
(13,258 posts)It's something I feel is missing in much of the debate these days.
Thanks for the definition of FUD. I remember when it was mostly applied to microsoft and the realm of micro-computers.
Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Yikes.
tecelote
(5,122 posts)Justifies what?
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Just sayin'
Cerridwen
(13,258 posts)I couldn't find that quote in the Atlantic article interview mentioned in the article in the OP. I may have missed where the author listed the other sources he used for the quotes.
Mixture
Origins: All of the quotes listed above are substantially correct reproductions of words uttered by various Democratic leaders regarding Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's acquisition or possession of weapons of mass destruction. However, as is typical of such lists, some of the quotes are truncated and all of them are provided without context so as to reinforce the author's point of view even when the proffered material does not fit it.
Namely, several of these quotes were offered in the course of statements that clearly indicated the speaker was decidedly against unilateral military intervention in Iraq by the U.S. Moreover, several of the quotes offered antedate the four nights of airstrikes unleashed against Iraq by U.S. and British forces during Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, after which Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) announced the action had been successful in "degrad<ing> Saddam Hussein's ability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons."
In the section below where we highlight these quotes, we've tried to provide sufficient surrounding material to make clear the context in which the quotes were offered as well as include links to the full text from which they were derived wherever possible.
It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.
<snip>
If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan?
So Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option.