What Sort of Foreign-Policy Hawk Is Hillary Clinton?/The New Yorker

This is the primary reason I won't vote for Hillary.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/what-sort-of-foreign-policy-hawk-is-hillary-clinton

Obama’s U-turn on Syria infuriated some of America’s Arab allies, and it alarmed some U.S. officials and former officials, who believed that it damaged the credibility of the United States. Goldberg quotes Leon Panetta, who served under Obama as C.I.A. director and Secretary of Defense, to this effect. He also reports that Clinton, who by the summer of 2013 had left the State Department, agreed with the critics of Obama’s decision. “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice,” she remarked privately.

In making this statement, Clinton was echoing a foreign-policy playbook that has ruled Washington for decades, and that Obama told Goldberg he was proud to have broken with. “The playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses,” the President said. “Where America is directly threatened, the playbook works. But the playbook can also be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.” Inside the White House, Goldberg reports, Obama went further, arguing that “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.”

If Clinton does become President, at some point she is likely to face a dilemma similar to the one that Obama faced in 2013. She will also be obliged to tackle a larger question that Obama, in his interviews with Goldberg, spent a lot of time tussling with: in the twenty-first century, what is America’s role in the world?

At this stage, it might be unwise to make bold predictions about how a President Hillary Clinton would deal with these issues. She must be keenly aware that there is little enthusiasm in the country for more interventionism. And entering the Oval Office places a burden on Presidents that can alter their views. But, based on what we now know, there isn’t much doubt where she would be coming from. “Hillary is very much a member of the traditional American foreign-policy establishment,” Vali Nasr, a foreign-policy strategist who advised Clinton on Afghanistan and Pakistan when she was Secretary of State, told Landler. “She believes, like presidents going back to the Reagan or Kennedy years, in the importance of the military—in solving terrorism, in asserting American influence.”