2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWhy HRC is Called A War Hawk & Why Kissinger and Neo Con Kagan Endorse Her:
Hillary Clinton has run to the right of the Obama administration on every major foreign policy issue and shes left a trail of devastation in her wake.
......Intervening in Libya, Surging in Afghanistan
If Clinton supported the Iraq war because she thought it politically expedient, she came to regret her stance when the war turned sour and Senator Barack Obama surged forward as the candidate opposed to that war during the presidential race in 2008.
But Clinton didnt learn the main lesson from Iraq to seek non- violent ways to solve conflicts. Indeed, when the Arab Spring came to Libya in 2010, Clinton was the Obama administrations most forceful advocate for toppling Muammar Gaddafi. She even out-hawked Robert Gates, the defense secretary first appointed by George W. Bush, who was less than enthusiastic about going to war. Gates was reluctant to get bogged down in another Arab country, insisting that vital U.S. interests were not at stake But Clinton nevertheless favored intervention.
When Libyan rebels carried out an extrajudicial execution of their countrys former dictator, Clintons response was sociopathic: We came, we saw, he died, she laughed. That sent a message that the United States would look the other way at crimes committed by allies against its official enemies.
In a weird bit of rough justice, the political grief Clinton has suffered over the September 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi that killed four Americans might never have occurred had Clinton not supported the U.S. intervention in Libyas civil war. While Republicans have focused relentlessly on the terrible deaths of the U.S. diplomats, the larger disaster is the ensuing chaos that left Libya without a functioning government, overrun by feuding warlords and extremist militants. In 2015, the suffering of desperate refugees who flee civil unrest many of whom drown in the Mediterranean Sea is a direct consequence of that disastrous operation.
Libya was part of a pattern for Clinton.
On Afghanistan, she advocated a repeat of the surge in Iraq. When the top U.S. commander in Kabul, General Stanley McChrystal, asked Obama for 40,000 more troops to fight the Taliban in mid-2009, several top officials including Vice President Joe Biden objected, insisting that the public had lost patience with a conflict that had already dragged on too long. But Clinton backed McChrystal and wound up favoring even more surge troops than Defense Secretary Gates did. Obama ultimately sent another 30,000 American soldiers to Afghanistan.
Clintons State Department also provided cover for the expansion of the not-so-covert drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. Clintons top legal adviser, Harold Koh, exploited his pre-government reputation as an advocate for human rights to declare in a 2010 speech that the government had the right not only to detain people without any charges at Guantanamo Bay, but also to kill them with unmanned aerial vehicles anywhere in the world.
Escalation in Syria
When it came to Syria, Obamas top diplomat was a forceful advocate for military intervention in that nations civil war.
When Obama threatened air strikes in 2013 to punish the Assad regimes use of chemical weapons, for example, Clinton publicly supported him, ignoring polls showing that more than 70 percent of Americans opposed military action. She described the planned U.S. attack on Syria as a limited strike to uphold a crucial global norm, although one of the clearest global norms under the UN Charter is that a country should not attack another country except in self-defense.
Clinton advocated arming Syrian rebels long before the Obama administration agreed to do so. In 2012, she allied with CIA Director David Petraeus to promote a U.S.-supplied-and-trained proxy army in Syria. As a U.S. Army general, Petraeus spent enormous amounts of money training Iraqi and Afghan soldiers with little success, but that did not deter him and Clinton from seeking a similar project in Syria. Together, they campaigned for more direct and aggressive U.S. support for the rebels, a plan supported by leading Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham. But few in the White House agreed, arguing that it would be difficult to appropriately vet fighters and ensure that weapons didnt fall into the hands of extremists.
Clinton was disappointed when Obama rejected the proposal, but a similar plan for the U.S. to vet and train moderate rebels at a starting cost of $500 million was later approved. Some of the trained rebels were quickly routed and captured; others, more concerned with toppling Assad than fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) defected to the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front. In September 2015, the head of U.S. Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, told an incredulous Senate Armed Services Committee that the $500 million effort to train Syrian forces had resulted in a mere four or five fighters actively battling ISIS. Undeterred, Clinton said that as commander-in-chief, she would dramatically escalate the program.
In October 2015, Clinton broke with the Obama White House on Syria by calling for the creation of a no-fly zone ....
snip
http://fpif.org/hillary-clintons-support-iraq-war-no-fluke/
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)NewImproved Deal
(534 posts)Do you miss Wolfowitz? She'll bring him--and that whole rotten swarm--back...
[link:|
MisterP
(23,730 posts)they thought the New Left was handing over the country to Commie-Fascist capital-T Totalitarianism; Orwell even died writing a list of political undesirables for the CIA (and thought he was preventing 1984 from coming true thereby)
more importantly that brought lefty language to interventionism in both parties: we weren't intervening to stop change and lock down colonialism, but to throw off a new colonizer (this was the same motive for the Congo Free State) and to let liberal electoral democracy thrive like we had back here--to bring the Four Freedoms worldwide
amborin
(16,631 posts)The connection between Hillary and the extreme right Republican Neocons became much clearer today when Robert Kagan, a co-founder and co-author of The Project for the New American Century, endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.
I would be tempted to call his endorsement a dirty trick designed to drive Democrats away from HRC, but the closeness between them has gone on for many years. Therefore, I think this is just a neocon effort to co-opt the Democratic party. Im sure they believe it would be better for their desires if they own both parties, not just the Republicans.
This Sunday 2014 NYT article shows the reasoning.
The Next Act of the Neocons -- Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
I believe this should set off extreme alarms for anyone who believes it is important to have more than one party, more than one ideology, in charge of our government. This alarm is, to me, a warning that we may be setting a one party-ideology in concrete to rule us even more stringently than a monarchy. I find it terrifying.
We need to remember that Robert Kagans wife is Victoria Nuland. Nuland had been a foreign policy adviser to VP Dick Cheney. When Obama was elected and named Clinton as Secretary of State, HRC brought Victoria Nuland into the State Department.
snip
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Trump may be a pompous buffoon, but Clintons foreign policy is going to be far worse.
Yurovsky
(2,064 posts)Hillary would screw the pooch on purpose... As long as there's a dollar to be made...
farleftlib
(2,125 posts)She already has plenty of blood on her hands and she'll keep the bombs dropping
on dark-skinned people because it's good for her MIC donors.
amborin
(16,631 posts)implement regime change
Uncle Joe
(58,370 posts)Thanks for the thread, amborin.
John Poet
(2,510 posts)That seems to be who they really want,
if they're voting for Hillary.
Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)On Wed May 4, 2016, 04:00 PM an alert was sent on the following post:
Democrats should just be honest and nominate Jeb Bush.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1899897
REASON FOR ALERT
This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.
ALERTER'S COMMENTS
Completely over the top and inappropriate.
You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Wed May 4, 2016, 04:02 PM, and the Jury voted 1-6 to LEAVE IT.
Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I thought the bar was hgher than this post until I read the OP the other day about sanders supporters being rand paul fans.
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Over the top would have been w. Bush
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)That alone should make any real progressive nervous.
amborin
(16,631 posts)vintx
(1,748 posts)At least if you still trust elections.
Where's the one that compares the Clinton/Sanders differentials to the Republican primary results? Anyone have it?
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Inconvenient truths about the New Democrats, the Third Way, Democratic Leadership Council, etc (yours truly 2008)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2973191
She's just another brick in the "imperial" wall, isn't she?
K&R
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Take PNAC, please.
Flashback: What Neocons Told Us about Iraq
Dick Cheney
"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." June 20, 2005 (Source)
"I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." March 16, 2003 (Source)
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. (Source)
"If we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing. September 13, 2006 (Source)
What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action. October 5, 2004 (Source)
Bill Kristol
Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president. July 15, 2007 (Source)
"This is going to be a two month war, not an eight year war." March 28, 2003 (Source)
"There has been a certain amount of pop sociology... that the Shi'a can't get along with the Sunni... there's almost no evidence of that at all. April 4, 2003 (Fox News w/ Bill OReilly)
"The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. April 28, 2003 (Source)
there are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath. March 22, 2004 (Source)
the continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree--peacefully--and then to compromise. March 22, 2004 (Source)
Paul Wolfowitz
There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon. March 27, 2003 (Source)
On weapons of mass destruction: There's no question in my mind that there was something there. There are just too many pieces of evidence and we'll get to the bottom of it. August 1, 2003 (Source)
Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam (Hussein) Iraq, are wildly off the mark. February 27, 2003 (Source)
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddams security forces and his army. Hard to imagine." Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia along with the requirement for large policing forces to separate those militias. Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators. Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. March 11, 2003 (Source)
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." May 28, 2003
SOURCE: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/flashback-republicans-iraq-cheney-wolfowitz-kristol
Others, also, have noticed: Bernie Sanders has INTEGRITY.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/give-em-hell-bernie-20150429?page=2
Please compare with the bi-partisan PNAC crypto-fascist corporate interests bent on fracking Ukraine and making money off war four ways to Super Tuesday:
What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?
Fri, Feb 7, 2014
By ORIENTAL REVIEW
What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?
Yesterdays leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine. They agreed to nominate Batkyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as Yanukovychs project. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week to glue things together. Referring to the European role in managing Ukraines political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: Fuck the EU.
In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: this is a new low in Russian tradecraft), Mrs. Nuland made her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washingtons repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the strategic Transatlantic partnership is more worthy of an apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine? Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Back to the latest Mrs. Nulands diplomatic collapse which was made public, it was unlikely an unfortunate misspelling. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding, Part I and Part II) a couple of days ago describing Mrs.Nulands blatant lack of professionalism and personal integrity. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian independent NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.
CONTINUED w/LINKS...
http://orientalreview.org/2014/02/07/what-about-apologizing-to-ukraine-mrs-nuland/
If you've time, there's great video at the link, too.
Neocons and Liberals Together, Again
The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security...
Tom Barry, last updated: February 02, 2005
The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume." Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global fighting machine.
SNIP...
Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons
The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, have included hawkish Democrats.
Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter, PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul: "Everyone-those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors-must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."
Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq. Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28 called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael O'Hanlon.
CONTINUED...
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Neocons_and_Liberals_Together_Again
That's from Rightweb. They're full of facts, for those who take the time to read and learn. One name to pay attention to is Victoria Nuland, our woman in Ukraine, who is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan. Robert Kagan's brother is Frederick Kagan. Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan.
Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. The thing is, that's a lot of PNAC and the PNAC approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to democracy, peace and justice.
Bernie has none of that.
And a special "Fuck You" for those who support the BFEE.
Jitter65
(3,089 posts)Donald and the Bernie?
vintx
(1,748 posts)"We never called it a coup"
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.
Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstans president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.
Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leaders bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clintons public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstans poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clintons wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstans state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.
The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the worlds largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?_r=3&ref=politics&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
amborin
(16,631 posts)HRC's judgment is horrific; one bloodbath blunder after another